Melanesian prime ministers have have signed off two declarations addressing the pressing issues of climate crisis and national security.
The ceremonial signing took place at the Havannah Resort in North Efate yesterday, marking the culmination of the 22nd Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) Leaders’ Summit Retreat.
The signatories included host Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau of Vanuatu, Manasseh Sogavare of Solomon Islands, James Marape of Papua New Guinea, Sitiveni Rabuka of Fiji and Victor Tutugoro, spokesperson of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of Kanaky New Caledonia.
The history of these agreements commenced with the inaugural accord inked in Lakatoro, Malekula, in 1994.
Subsequent gatherings saw the signing of a second pact in Port Vila in 1998, followed by the third document signed during a Leaders’ Summit held in the Solomon Islands.
Prime Minister Kalsakau expressed satisfaction with the summit’s proceedings, highlighting the successful collaboration that yielded two comprehensive documents. He noted that these papers were both “content-rich and orderly” in outlining MSG’s strategic course on matters of importance to the region’s people.
Kalsakau acknowledged the impact of strong and visionary leadership, which served to refine the direction and purpose of Melanesia, ensuring it remained steadfastly on the right course.
‘Safeguarding’ Melanesia
He said he was content with the summit’s conclusion, characterising it as a “joyous occasion”.
“To ensure the safeguarding of Melanesia’s wellbeing and to achieve the highest levels of contentment among its people on the horizon, we have united as a collective whole,” Kalsakau remarked.
Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders have signed off on two declaration for the first time. The first on climate and and the second one of security in North Efate a while ago. A presser will be held in Port Vila. West Papua issue likely to be referred to Pacific Islands Forum. pic.twitter.com/IJuzBnbjmE
He expressed gratitude to his colleagues for their contributions in shaping the final outcomes.
Concluding his address, Kalsakau invoked blessings upon the people of Melanesia and expressed his profound gratitude for the presence of all attendees.
This unity and collaboration, he affirmed, was the cornerstone of progress for the entire region.
The leaders shared in a tradition deeply rooted in Vanuatu culture — sharing a shell of kava to conclude the regional diplomatic dialogue.
Pacific Media Watch reports that there was no mention of West Papua or the long awaited full membership issues and a promised media conference had not eventuated.
Doddy Morrisis a Vanuatu Daily Post reporter. Republished with permission.
The Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat’s Director-General, Leonard Louma, says the Pacific region continues to be the centre of geopolitical interests by global superpowers.
The 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit is taking place in Port Vila this week– the first full in-person meeting since the covid pandemic.
The prime ministers of Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and the president of the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) of New Caledonia are confirmed to attend the leaders’ session on Wednesday.
Louma said the battle for influence “impels the region to take sides, but it does not protect Melanesia and the region”.
“There are some who would like us to believe that taking sides in that geopolitical posturing is in our best interest. May I hasten to add, I tend to defer — it is not in our best interest to take sides,” Louma said.
Vanuatu’s Deputy Prime Minister Matai Seremaiah (left) and MSG Director-General Leonard Louma at the opening of the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Port Vila yesterday. Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
The director-general also took aim at MSG member countries for not moving with “urgency” on issues that have been on the Leaders’ Summit agenda.
“Certain decisions also made by leaders and the foreign ministers of past continue to languish on the shelf and there seems to be no real sign of a desire to implement.”
Free trade Louma said the MSG Free Trade Agreement had “somehow been tethered to other training and commercial arrangements”.
“Our enthusiasm to cooperate appears to have waned. We need to rejuvenate this enthusiasm and appetite for industrial cooperation that once was the hallmark of MSG,” he said.
Vanuatu’s Foreign Minister Matai Seremaiah has urged Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea to sign up to the trade agreement which has already been signed by Fiji and Solomon Islands.
Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau told RNZ Pacific he shared the concerns of his deputy on the issue of the free trade agreement.
“Vanuatu must adhere quickly. If you look at the theme of the meeting it’s about being relevant and being relevant means that we’ve got got to participate as a core group so that we can advance all our interests together,” he said.
Leonard Louma said the MSG needed to make concessions where it was needed in the interests of MSG cohesion.
“The nuclear testing issue in the Pacific could not have proceeded the way we had proceeded without MSG taking a strong position on it.”
The Melanesian Spearhead Group flags . . . will the Morning Star flag of West Papua be added? Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
Declarations On Monday, MSG Secretariat officials said there were up to 10 issues on the agenda, including West Papua.
In his opening statement at the Foreign Minister’s session on Monday, Seremaiah said there were two key draft declarations that would be put for the leaders’ consideration.
The first one would be on climate action and “urging polluters not to discharge the treated water in the Pacific Ocean,” he said.
“Until and unless the treated water is incontrovertibly proven to be safe to do so and seriously consider other options.”
The second was a declaration on a MSG region of peace and neutrality, adding that “this declaration is aimed at advancing the implementation of the MSG security initiatives to address national security needs in the MSG region, through the Pacific way, talanoa or tok stori and binded by shared values and adherence to Melanesian vuvale, cultures and traditions”.
The MSG Pre-Summit Foreign Ministers Meeting has concluded with recommendations to be submitted to this weeks’ 22nd MSG Leader’s Summit. It was chaired by Hon. Matai Seremiah, MP, Deputy Prime Minister & Minister for Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation & External Trade. pic.twitter.com/Xe87w27BtW
West Papua
This year’s agenda also includes the issue of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) application to become a full member of the sub-regional body.
The movement is present at the meeting, as well as a big delegation from Indonesia, represented by its Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs.
However, neither Seremaiah nor Louma made any mention of West Papua in their opening statements.
West Papua observers and advocates at the meeting say the MSG is like a “custom haus or nakamal” for the Melanesian people.
They say Vanuatu has the opportunity to make this more than a “normal MSG” if it can be the country that gets the MSG Leaders’ Summit to agree to make the ULMWP a full member.
The West Papua delegation as observers at the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit pre-meeting in Port Vila yesterday. Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Two researchers examining responses to conspiratorial pandemic narratives have warned Aotearoa New Zealand not to be complacent over the risk of fringe views over climate crisis becoming populist.
Byron C. Clark, a video essayist and author of the recent book Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists, and Emmanuel Stokes, a postgraduate student at the University of Canterbury, argue in a paper in the latest Pacific Journalism Review that policymakers and community stakeholders need to be ready to counter politicised disinformation with a general election looming.
“Tellingly, these were often linked with wider sets of issues into which the climate challenge was crudely bundled,” the authors say.
Their paper argues that “complex matters of national importance , such as climate change or public health emergencies, can be seized upon by alternative media and conspiracist influencers and incorporated onto emotionally potent, reductive stories that are apparently designed to elicit outrage and protest”.
The authors cite examples in the Pacific, saying that they “suspect that a danger exists that . . . the appetite for this kind of storytelling could increase in tandem with growing social disruption caused by the climate crisis, including a large-scale refugee influx on our shores”.
Such a scenario would need to be covered with “a high degree of journalist ethics and professionalism” to prevent “amplifying hateful, dehumanising narratives”.
‘Concerning’ statements
In an interview with Asia Pacific Report, Clark highlighted how various fringe parties in New Zealand were all making “concerning” statements about climate change as the October 14 election drew closer.
“New Conservatives begin their environment policy with ‘There is no climate emergency’. Then they pledge to ‘end all climate focused taxes, subsidies, and regulations’,” he said.
“DemocracyNZ wants to repeal the Climate Change Response Act and veto any new taxes on farming. Elsewhere in their policy they appear to downplay the impact of methane (Aotearoa’s largest source of emissions),” Clark said.
The FreedomsNZ party had not yet released detailed policy but promised to “end climate change overreach”.
Clark found the comments from DemocracyNZ on methane particularly interesting as Groundswell recently sponsored a tour by American scientist Dr Tom Sheahen, who — in contrast to the scientific consensus on climate change — made the claim that methane was an “irrelevant” greenhouse gas.
Dr Sheahen also appeared on the Reality Check Radio show Greenwashed, hosted by former Federated Farmers president Don Nicholson and Jaspreet Boparai, a dairy farmer and member of Voices for Freedom, who was last year elected to the Southland District Council.
“Greenwashed is the kind of alt-media that could influence how people vote,” Clark said.
“While none of these parties I’ve mentioned are likely to get into Parliament, if they get, say, 50,000 votes between them, more mainstream parties could look at how they could appeal to the same constituency in the future, as 1 percent of the vote can be the difference between being in government and being in opposition.
Mainstreaming of misinformation
“That could lead to the mainstreaming of misinformation about climate change.”
However, Clark believes Pacific nations are “less susceptible to climate change disinformation as they’re experiencing the direct effects of climate change.
“In Aotearoa, many people remain insulated from it (notwithstanding events like Cyclone Gabrielle) and many people’s livelihoods, as well as the economies of some regions, are dependent on activity that contributes to the greenhouse effect (such as dairy farming) which makes downplaying the significance of the crisis appealing.”
But Clark admits that misinformation about covid and the vaccine has spread in the Pacific. Also competition between large powers in the region – such as China and the US — could lead to more disinformation targeting the Pacific, potentially including climate change disinformation.
I think Pacific nations are less susceptible to climate change disinformation as they are experiencing the direct effects of climate change, while in Aotearoa many people remain insulated from it (notwithstanding events like Cyclone Gabrielle) and many people’s livelihoods, as well as the economies of some regions, are dependent on activity that contributes to the greenhouse effect (such as dairy farming) which makes downplaying the significance of the crisis appealing.
Targeting the Pacific
However, misinformation about covid and the vaccine has spread in the Pacific, and competition between large powers in the region (the US and China for example) could lead to more disinformation targeting the Pacific, potentially including climate change disinformation.
In his book Fear, Clark devoted two out of the 23 chapters — “The Fox News of the Pasifika community” and “Counterspin Media” — to examining the impact of misinformation on the Pasifika community in Aotearoa.
APNA Television cancelled the Pacific Fox News-style programme Talanoa Sa’o, although the show is still recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
“Its reach appears to be smaller than it was. Counterspin Media also looks to have a declining reach. The show originally aired on GTV, a network operated by the dissident Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.
“While there has not been any explicit evidence to suggest that Guo or his businesses were funding Counterspin, they have appeared to be struggling since Guo filed for bankruptcy, having to find a new studio.
Are there any new trends — especially impacting on the Pacific communities, or perceptions of them?
“The biggest chance in the disinformation landscape since I wrote Fear has been the arrival of Reality Check Radio, which produces 9 hours a day of content on weekdays (unlike Talanoa Sa’o or CounterspinMedia, which would produce an hour or two a week).
“None of their content is designed to appeal in particular to a Pacific audience, however.
“Another development is organisations like Family First and some evangelical churches campaigning against LGBT+ rights and sex education in schools, with the New Conservatives continuing to campaign on these same issues.”
Affecting democracy
Clark remains convinced that mis- and disinformation are going to continue to be an issue affecting New Zealand’s democracy.
“The networks established during the pandemic remain and are starting to pivot from covid and vaccine mandates to other issues — climate change being a significant one, but also co-governance and LGBT+ rights,” he said.
“This means journalism will be increasingly important.”
In a separate paper in Pacific Journalism Review, the journal editor, Dr Philip Cass, examines the impact of conspiracy theories on Pacific churches and community information channels, drawing a contrast between evangelical/Pentecostal and mainstream religious institutions.
He said that “in spite of the controversial behaviour of [Destiny Church’s] ‘Bishop’ Brian Tamaki, most mainstream Pacific churches were highly alert to the reality of the virus and supportive of their communities”.
Dr Cass called for further research such as an online study in Pacific languages to gauge any difference between diasporic sources and home island sources, and a longitudinal study to indicate whether anti-vaccination and conspiracy theory messages have changed — and in what way — since 2020.
Dr David Robie is an editor of PJR and convenor of Pacific Media Watch.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on Aug. 2, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
We have entered uncharted territory when it comes to climate breakdown, after climate agencies declared the first week of July as the hottest week ever recorded. The hottest week on record comes in the wake of the hottest June on record. And all of the warmest eight years ever recorded have come since 2015, with 2016 being the warmest ever, followed by 2019 and 2020.
Skeptics might argue that these records have only been kept for a small portion of human history — global temperature records only date back to the 1850s. But the UN confirmed that over the course of July, fourteen days have recorded global surface air temperatures higher than 17 degrees Celsius — an increase that has not been seen over the course of the last 125,000 years.
Heatwaves brought astonishing temperatures to southern Europe, with Almeria, Spain, experiencing a temperature of 44 degrees Celsius. Rome experienced its hottest day ever, with temperatures reaching 41.8 degrees Celsius, and temperatures of 45.3 degrees Celsius in Catalonia also broke records. Wildfires spread through Portugal and Greece as a result of extreme heat, and fires raged in Italy, Croatia, and Turkey.
This comes on the back of the astonishing scenes in North America, where Canadian wildfires blanketed the region in smoke. And a heat wave that swept across the southern United States brought record-breaking temperatures to parts of Arizona, Texas, and California, with temperatures in Phoenix peaking at 118 degrees Fahrenheit, or 47.8 degrees Celsius.
The scientific journal Nature recently released a study showing that up to sixty-one thousand people died last year as a direct result of heat waves across Europe.
Toward the start of this year, parts of South Asia recorded temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius, though they often felt higher due to humidity. Climate change made the heat wave at least two degrees hotter than it otherwise would have been.
Ocean temperatures have risen sharply too. In Florida, ocean temperatures reached a shocking 38.4 degrees Celsius — at least six degrees above what should be expected, in what could be a record-breaking rise in ocean temperatures. NASA recently observed that the oceans are changing color as a result of this phenomenon. Unsurprisingly, record-high ocean temperatures have led to record-low sea ice coverage in Antarctica.
Rising temperatures are already killing thousands of people. The scientific journal Nature recently released a study showing that up to sixty-one thousand people died last year as a direct result of heat waves across Europe. In the United States, extreme heat is already the top annual weather-related killer — and 104 million people were placed under heat alerts last week as a result of rising temperatures.
More than 90 percent of these deaths occurred in the Global South. Those forced to bear the consequences of global warming largely caused by the Global North are those least able to bear the economic and health consequences. As Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, passionately attested in Glasgow in 2021, the rich world has been astonishingly slow to provide aid to those places on the front line of the fight against climate breakdown.
And things are only going to get worse. Scientists are now extremely concerned that temperatures will breach the limit of 1.5 degrees above preindustrial temperatures set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier than expected. The break could come as early as next year.
A leading climate scientist told the BBC last week that it was likely the scientific community had severely underestimated the rapidity and severity of climate breakdown. If current trends continue, the earth’s temperature is likely to reach 3 degrees above preindustrial levels over the next century, which would bring catastrophic damage to the ecological systems upon which human life on Earth depends.
The greatest obstacle to our ability to tackle climate breakdown is, of course, a capitalist economic system that views the earth’s natural wealth as a “free gift” to be exploited for private gain. We have known for some time that one hundred companies are responsible for around 70 percent of global carbon emissions.
In fact, scientists at firms like ExxonMobil were aware of the damage that would be caused from burning fossil fuels as far back as the 1970s. But rather than bringing this information to the public’s attention, studies were buried, research budgets cut, and billions poured into lobbying and climate denialism. The company is now facing court cases across the United States as a result of the cover-up.
While the wealthy are disproportionately responsible, no one group caused climate breakdown. Climate breakdown is the direct result of an utterly unsustainable economic and social system that gives most people no choice other than to pollute in order to survive.
One study has demonstrated the direct consequences of the emissions released by the biggest fossil fuel companies, showing that BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Aramco, and Chevron are collectively responsible for $5.3 trillion worth of damage likely to emerge from climate breakdown between 2025 and 2050. The companies owe the world — and particularly the poorest nations — $209 billion in annual climate reparations as a result.
So, what is stopping us from taking on the power of the big fossil fuel companies?
Clearly, these firms and the coterie of lobbyists, lawyers, and politicians that support them are very well-organized. But the forces opposing them are not. Rather than banding together to demand that the big fossil fuel companies pay for the damage that they have caused, most people seem to believe that the only way to fix climate breakdown is to stop using plastic straws, take the bus, or go vegan.
This individualistic understanding of the problem, and the potential solutions, is by far the greatest challenge that the climate movement faces. Yet leading climate campaigners can often be found playing up to this dynamic by blaming working people for their “carbon footprint” —a concept that was developed by BP to shift the blame for climate breakdown onto individuals.
No one person caused climate breakdown. While the wealthy are disproportionately responsible, no one group caused climate breakdown. Climate breakdown is the direct result of an utterly unsustainable economic and social system that gives most people no choice other than to pollute in order to survive.
The only way to change this is to transform the very foundations of our society — from the infrastructure we use to travel, live, and work, to the ideologies that allow us to make sense of the world. Alongside capital, individualism is perhaps our greatest enemy in this fight.
In recent years, several countries have made updates to their nonbinding emission reduction plans as part of the Paris Agreement. These Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) state how each country intends to reach its goals by 2025 and 2030. This decade is deemed by scientists to be crucial for our plans to halt global warming and stay below a 2.0ºC (2 degrees Celsius) warming increase — or 1.
This story originally appeared in Yellow Scene on July 17, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
“Mom, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m going there.”
When Mylene Vialard followed her 21-year-old daughter across the US to join the thousands of the resistance by Water Protectors led by Indigenous women at Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, her aim was clear: to help make change, not just for the Indigenous people whose treaty rights, lifeways, and bodies have been violated, but for everyone. What she didn’t know was how much the experience would change her.
That was two years ago. Today, up to 760,000 barrels of tar sands oil (bitumen), a particularly resource-intensive and harmful form of crude petroleum, gush from Alberta to Wisconsin through the completed pipeline, and the Boulder-based activist is one of several activists around the US who face felony charges in northern Minnesota’s Aitkin County. Vialard’s trial is the week of August 28.
Asked why she refused to take a plea bargain, Vialard answered with a defiant smile. It’s because on the day she was arrested, she was not in the wrong: “I don’t feel guilty. I feel that Enbridge should feel guilty.” Vialard explained that had she taken a plea deal, the problem would have remained: “I know my charges are pretty high. But it’s admitting guilt.” Instead she focused on “recentering the conversation about the true nature of what’s wrong, the fact that Enbridge has been digging under 200 bodies of water. They have pipelines going under the headwaters of the Mississippi. We know that pipelines leak.” Just as Vialard’s daughter played a role in the decision to join the fight, she is also part of her mother’s inspiration for standing trial: “We all need to stand up against this. Because I have a child, you know? I want her future to be better than this. That’s simple.”
Asked why she refused to take a plea bargain, Vialard answered with a defiant smile. It’s because on the day she was arrested, she was not in the wrong: ‘I don’t feel guilty. I feel that Enbridge should feel guilty.’
In fact, Enbridge’s pipelines have leaked many times. The Line 3 oil spill in 1991 at Grand Rapids, Minnesota, remains the largest inland oil spill in US history. What’s more, the deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions associated with Line 3 — and the other numerous projects like it — are centrally implicated in intensifying climate change. Then there’s the impact of industrial encroachment on Indigenous communities — particularly women, who experience violence at twice the rate of other American women, in most cases at the hands of non-Indigenous men.
Although Water Protectors have many reasons to grieve the completion of Line 3, they also celebrate the movement’s success, calculated in hours and days the construction was delayed, the bright light shed on the corporate and government oil infrastructure, skills gained, and relationships built. Resistance took many unforgettable forms, from legal support, donations, puppetry, student die-ins, and international protests, to expertly coordinated direct action such as protesters locking themselves to construction equipment. Spending weeks, months, even years camping and surviving collectively in Minnesota’s bitter cold winters and sweltering summers is an achievement in itself.
When it comes to lessons learned during her several weeks at Line 3, Vialard (aka Ocean), a seasoned activist who focused on Indigenous studies as a master’s student in France, could write a book. “I’ve been working in racial justice for many years. I’ve been learning and learning and learning, but then experiencing it is yet one more level of learning.” Vialard’s years of community organizing include her work as a core member of Boulder SURJ (B-SURJ, Showing Up for Racial Justice), particularly in recent years since the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. This fall Vialard’s work on B-SURJ’s upcoming racial justice film series will enrich the Boulder community, though she may be incarcerated at that time. However, living in a community with Water Protectors of all ages, from all over, most of whom did not share her white, cisgender, and middle-class privilege, taught Vialard new levels of meaning for the frequently used term “solidarity.” For her, solidarity means “love and care. I learned that the model that we have of how to be in the world is not necessarily the best model. I knew that, but I didn’t know the alternative, necessarily. Any action starts with solidarity, and care, and trust, and love… when you build trust, when you come with trust, when you come with the idea that we are all in this together, there’s a lot more joy, for one, and there’s a lot more integrity to everything you do.”
Solidarity among Water Protectors at Line 3 involved much more than emotions. Vialard saw strangers providing for one another on a fundamental material level. “If someone needs something and asks for it, there’s always someone coming up with it and bringing it and just figuring out a way to support that person.” Vialard added, “safety is key.” Beyond establishing networks of material mutual aid, solidarity among Water Protectors was based on a shared experience of embodied risk: “We’re there in solidarity with Indigenous people who are fighting the fight, who had been fighting the fight for centuries. We are there in solidarity with them, we are putting our bodies on the line in solidarity with them. And Indigenous people talk about being one with the earth, one with the elements, and one with every other human on this planet. That guides the actions that we take.”
Vialard learned that solidarity is also about sharing knowledge and experience while connecting across differences: “What was amazing is that people were from very young to very old and everything in between, and everybody was learning from each other. So I think that was really beautiful, like how much I learned from 20-year-olds, and how much I learned about from grandmas who were in their 80s and willing to sit for a whole day to protest and to support the fight. And stories. Stories were amazing, just conversations around the fire, just people from all walks of life.I got to meet really amazing people. It was very powerful in terms of human experience.”
Vialard’s exploration of solidarity was also excruciatingly difficult at times. When asked to describe a hard lesson that she wouldn’t mind discussing publicly, Vialard wrinkled her brow and laughed “Do I want to talk about this? It’s interesting because for me, it was one of the hardest places I’ve been in. Definitely, being a white body in a mostly Indigenous and Black and Brown, Two Spirit, trans environment—being a white, older, cisgender woman—was really interesting to me. And really hard, too, because I noticed what my body represents to certain people, and the harm that the way I look brings, the traumas that it might bring to people. So being aware of that and not being able to do very much about it, except keep showing up, with awareness.”
On one occasion, Vialard was called out, anonymously yet publicly, “for something that some people think was totally banal. But intent and impact really hit home, you know? That was the hardest part. I had people in the group I was with who were like, ‘Yeah, you did a shitty thing, and I’m gonna walk with you through it.’ That role-modeling from a 20-year-old, for example, was just the most amazing. I can’t learn this in a book!” Beaming, Vialard expresses gratitude for all she experienced while resisting Line 3. “The couple of days I spent in jail, the human pain that I was privileged to witness, and to share, and to hold, really shifted the way I look at the carceral system, the way I see punishment in this country.”
For Vialard, it’s imperative to build further action on the basis of these experiences. “Climate change is happening, and nobody’s doing anything. We have Indigenous people who are warning us, who are saying, ‘No, we’ve been taking care of this planet for centuries—forever. And we’re telling you, this is wrong.’ And we’re not listening, for profit. But at the end of the day, regardless of who you are, you’re going to be suffering from climate change.” Likewise, Maryellen Novak (aka Beena), another frontline activist who fought at Line 3, argued that “the events related to Line 3 were impactful methods for activists to communicate the terrifying ramifications that people—of every age, from all walks of life, located everywhere—experience when greenhouse gas emissions are released into our atmosphere. The injustice is when the powerful don’t listen because they live only for their lifeless profits, not people. We choose to fight for the living, for love.”
As with so many issues in our time, Vialard’s takeaways from fighting oil extraction are introductions rather than conclusions, because oil is related to every other industry, and climate is related to race, gender, class, age, disability, and more.She elaborated, “The conversation is not over. It’s happening all over the US … places like the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia. It’s also Thacker Pass in Nevada. It’s also the Willow Project in Alaska. The Defend the Forest movement. It’s all linked. I’m thinking about what happened in East Palestine, right? Here in Colorado, there’s the Uinta Basin Railway that comes from Utah. And that would bring five two-mile-long trains through Denver, through Glenwood Springs. And if the derailment happens with waxy oil that’s being heated, it’s going to be a disaster, no matter where it happens.”
In Vialard’s home of Boulder County, site of the deadly Marshall Fire, residents know well how climate change can impact anyone at any time. Yet it’s difficult to argue that enough changes are being made to mitigate the ongoing danger of wildfire. Vialard emphasizes that everyone should start to take a stand when they can: “People are not aware about their power. You don’t have to get arrested. You don’t have to do something extreme. Just have the conversation, do the learning, call your representative, send a letter. Just be aware. Just hold a sign when it’s needed. Follow your heart. You know inside what needs to happen. Educate your child about it.f you talk about it at home, that’s a form of activism. It’s a form of changing the balance.”
Greg Mangan (aka Mango), another Line 3 Water Protector, pointed out how difficult it can be, and crucial it is, to start making change: “Each of us, every day, is struggling to decide how we want to show up in this world. We are all so distracted and busy. But, I think it’s important to remember that our future selves will be very critical when we judge the choices we made today.” As Vialard described, there is no shortage of opportunities: “It’s just about standing up to something that you know is wrong. Finding your voice and feeling the power of that. I think there’s a lot of power in that. And when you stand up, there’s a whole spectrum of different actions that you can do.”
Mylene Vialard is putting her body on the line once again, this time by possibly serving a prison sentence. For her, it’s on a continuum with all of her other activism: “Not taking the plea deal and going to trial is using my voice to point out where the problems are, what the issues are. And, you know, I don’t have that big of a voice, but it’s what I can do right now. The outcome of the trial is secondary to me. If we can raise the awareness and can plant seeds, it’s a victory for me.”
A new report has found practical solutions to address climate change in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), including raising roads and using mangrove forests.
Decision-makers have been urged to prepare for major changes.
These include heatwaves, stronger typhoons, a declining ecosystem, threatened food security and increased health issues.
The research is part of a series of reports by the Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment, with support of several government, NGO, and research entities.
Climate variability and extreme events have brought unprecedented challenges to remote atoll communities of Micronesia, especially in the state of Yap.
The report highlighted key issues for health, food security, agriculture, agroforestry, marine and disaster management sectors.
It also looked at the importance of using local knowledge and pairing this with new technology and science to help Micronesia adapt to climate change.
Hope for action
Coordinating lead author Zena Grecni hopes the findings will help policy-makers take action.
“We could see a 20-50 percent decrease in coral reef fish by 2050,” Grecni warned.
Climate proofing
Coordinating lead author Zena Grecni . . . “We could see a 20-50 percent decrease in coral reef fish by 2050.” Image: RNZ Pacific
The findings pushed for change at a “grass roots level,” and for state agencies to recognise the need for traditional knowledge and cultural resources in coastal adaptation measures.
About 89 percent of the FSM’s population lives within one kilometre of the coast, and buildings and infrastructure are vulnerable to coastal climate impacts.
The report looked at “climate proofing” interventions such as raising roads and using natural barriers like mangrove forests.
Mangroves have been shown to mitigate the effects of rising sea levels and are more effective long-term for sea level rise, instead of hard structures.
Another key priority was strengthening infrastructure like schools and medical centres.
Climate change in curricula
The report suggested climate change be included in school curricula to help inform future generations.
It highlighted the importance of learning from local knowledge and historical experiences to inform the future of local food supply.
Indigenous practices such as stone-lined enclosures, taro plantings raised above coastal groundwater, and replanted mangroves, were set to respond to sea level rise.
In the past, these reports have been used by other Pacific Islands “as a tool for negotiation,” Grecni said.
The report authors hoped it would help Micronesia in the same way.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on July 12, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
On June 29, the air quality in Detroit was among the worst in the world.
“Outside it smelled like burnt plastic, almost like trash,” said UAW member Cody Zaremba, who works at a General Motors plant in Lansing, Michigan. He and his co-workers were experiencing coughing, runny noses, watery eyes, and trouble breathing.
But GM didn’t even acknowledge the smoke, Zaremba said, much less offer any protection.
“Everybody just had to go about it their own way,” he said. “We can all see it and smell it. But what are we going to do about it?”
As wildfires, drought, floods, and scorching heat disrupt the supply chain, the logistics industry is starting to worry about the impact of climate change…on profits.
But workers are the ones bearing the brunt—forced to work through extreme weather events, induced by climate change, that are getting more frequent and more severe.
Wildfires in Canada this summer have spread hazardous smoke through the U.S. East Coast and Midwest. Semi-regular wildfires throughout the West Coast have produced what are now known as “fire seasons.”
Outdoor workers like those in delivery, construction, and farming are among the hardest hit. On the frontlines of the climate crisis, some workers are standing up to their employers’ negligence.
‘UPS’s plan was hope’
Teamsters say UPS was unprepared this summer when New York City’s Air Quality Index spiked to a record high of 484 as smoky air clogged the city.
An AQI above 300 is categorized as hazardous. Besides the immediate effects of burning eyes and coughing, particulate matter from wildfires can damage the lungs and heart, triggering asthma and heart attacks.
“The company didn’t do anything. We went out there, business as usual,” said UPS driver Basil Darling, an alternate steward in Teamsters Local 804. “It was only customers who were concerned. Customers offered me masks.”
One co-worker at his hub in Brooklyn was taken to the emergency room after working half the day in the smoke.
This wasn’t the first summer that UPS ignored this problem. Geoff Donnelly, a package delivery driver in Reno, was still making deliveries even after his family had packed up their belongings in preparation to flee the Caldor fire in 2021.
The fire blazed across Nevada and Northern California, burning more than 220,000 acres and lasting nearly two months before it was contained.
“UPS’s plan was hope,” said Donnelly, a Teamsters Local 533 shop steward: “We hope that the fire isn’t coming our way.”
The company lied, he said: “They told me that they had a plan, but they didn’t.” UPS handed out surgical masks, not high-quality N95s—even as the AQI shot up to a record high of almost 700 in Tahoe City, California.
Dodging obligations
When AQI reaches 500, under California OSHA guidelines, employers must not only offer but require employees to wear respirators such as N95 masks. But Donnelly emphasized that UPS suffers no consequences for dodging its safety obligations.
“You can say the company must provide masks or respirators, but if they don’t, there’s no penalty,” he said. “If there’s no penalty, why have the language? What good does it do?”
Like California, Oregon and Washington have passed statewide OSHA guidelines requiring the provision of respirators.
But “workers don’t just need respirators,” said Peter Dooley of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH). “The idea that outside workers are going to be wearing respirators all day is just not realistic.”
“When you work outside, there is really no escape,” said a Postal Service (USPS) letter carrier in Washington state who asked to be anonymous and has worked through both high heat and wildfire conditions. “The actual solution is, if the AQI is 300, 500, we should just be able to go home.”
There are still no federal regulations to protect workers from heat exposure or unhealthy air quality. And since letter carriers are considered federal employees, state-specific OSHA protections don’t apply to them either.
We keep each other safe
Despite several years of wildfires, companies on the West Coast still lack coherent safety policies on air quality.
Jorge Torres, an electrician with IBEW Local 46, was working on wiring a new Microsoft office compound in Redmond, Washington, last year when the skies got smoky.
The general contractor told workers they could use their sick leave to take the day off if they felt unsafe, or take an unpaid day. The electrical contractor’s plan consisted of providing three face masks for nearly 20 people.
Torres called his shop steward, but was told to wait until the union hall opened at 9 a.m.—two hours later—to be advised on what to do.
Torres decided not to wait. He went around the worksite talking to fellow workers. Everyone wanted to go home, but people were apprehensive about being the first to leave.
After he rallied his co-workers one by one, all 10 workers at his building walked out together and went home. The remaining six members of the electrical crew, who were working in another building, followed their foreman out shortly after.
Safety walkout worked
Torres made sure to develop a paper trail in the form of text messages to his steward, documenting his initial discomfort with the smoke as early as 7 a.m., and explaining why he and his co-workers had walked out.
“If the union takes the company’s position and tells us that it’s up to each individual, the union is telling its members that the union isn’t there for them,” Torres warned the steward. “[The contractor] can consider the crews of [the building]’s decision to perform a safety stop work as an opportunity for [the contractor] to spend the rest of the day planning out and implementing a robust and clear health and safety plan for wildfire smoke conditions.”
As he drove home, Torres received an update from a foreman—nobody would be docked sick time, and everyone would get a full day of pay. When the AQI remained dangerously high the following day, the general contractor paused work for the entire jobsite.
Other members of his local couldn’t believe they had done it. Torres attributed the surprise to a culture of “passivity, deference, a sense of inability to assert what you need or what you deserve.”
Deadly heat
The dangers of unhealthy air are compounded by extreme heat, another result of climate change.
Last year, as temperatures in the Los Angeles area climbed to the high 90s, 24-year-old UPS driver Esteban Chavez Jr. collapsed in the back of his truck while working and died.
UPS workers rallied to demand fans and air conditioning instead of surveillance cameras on their trucks. In this summer’s bargaining, ahead of an August 1 strike deadline, the Teamsters have won air conditioning in new trucks and the installation of fans and heat shields in existing ones.
Meanwhile in June, 66-year-old Postal Service letter carrier Eugene Gates Jr. collapsed and died on the job in Dallas, where the heat index had reached 115 degrees that day.
According to a Public Citizen report last year, environmental heat is likely responsible for more than 170,000 work-related injuries every year and 600 to 2,000 fatalities, making it one of the leading causes of death on the job.
‘Keep it moving!’
A month before his death, Gates Jr. had received a disciplinary letter for what USPS calls a “stationary event.”
A stationary event occurs when a letter carrier’s scanner registers as standing still for a few minutes—there’s no announced definition of exactly how long. Supervisors harass carriers about these events and push to minimize them.
Basic safety measures any worker should take in extreme heat—stopping in the shade to cool down and drink some water—could register as stationary events.
A scanner message sent out to carriers by management in one Dallas post office, shared with local news by the union branch president, says, “BEAT THE HEAT!!! NO STATIONARY EVENTS; KEEP IT MOVING!”
During a daily “stand-up” meeting at USPS, when supervisors warned about stationary events, the Washington letter carrier quoted above spoke up, informing co-workers that the union contract bans covert surveillance and that any disciplinary action on the basis of scanner data wouldn’t hold up. A supervisor spoke over her, apparently trying to drown this information out.
The Postal Service has touted its heat safety training. But many workers report they never received the training—even though management marked them as having received it. Virgilio Goze, an officer and steward in Letter Carriers Branch 79 in Seattle, has been helping members file grievances over this.
Since postal management routinely pays out grievance penalties without changing its behavior, Goze has gotten more creative in developing remedies. Rather than taking payouts, he combined monetary remedies to get an ice machine for his station. At least it’s “something communal,” he says. “You can point to it and say, ‘We won that.’”
Public Citizen estimates that California’s heat regulations, while imperfect, have reduced injuries by 30 percent. In New York, members of Local 804 are canvassing door to door to help pass the Temperature Extreme Mitigation Program (TEMP) Act, which would require employers to guarantee access to water and shade, and increase rest times for outside workers.
Still, much more is needed. The deadly combination of rising temperatures and wildfire smoke has to be understood as “climate injustice,” says Nancy Lessin, an advisor with National COSH. “This is yet another reason why the labor movement and the climate justice movement need to come together stronger than ever, to look to the future for the kind of prevention needed.”
Last week, the northeastern skyline was overtaken by an orange haze, as winds blew smoke from Canadian wildfires southwards. The impact was palpable as the effects of climate change became apparent to nearly 50 million Americans. Hundreds of wildfires are continuing to rage on in Canada. Above-average temperatures and dry conditions caused by climate change affect the intensity and longevity of…
The movement to Stop Cop City in Atlanta has brought environmental defenders and police abolitionists together to fight a mega-project that would demolish the historic Weelaunee Forest to create a massive urban warfare training facility. For standing up for people and the planet, more than 40 Cop City activists have been struck with domestic terrorism charges. Will Potter, author of Green Is the New Red, joins The Chris Hedges Report to place the repression of Cop City activists in a longer history of labeling environmental activists as ‘domestic terrorists.’
Will Potter is an investigative journalist whose work has focused on social justice and environmental movements, and attacks on civil rights post-9/11. He is the author of Green Is the New Red, among other books.
Studio Production: Adam Coley, Dwayne Gladden Post-Production: Adam Coley Audio Post-Production: Tommy Harron
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Speaker 1:
(singing)
Chris Hedges:
When police in Atlanta stormed a music festival in March being held by activists protesting Cop City, the proposed $90 million police and firefighter training center that would be built on forest land, 23 of the activists were arrested and one, Tortuguita, a 26-year-old Indigenous environmental activist and community organizer was shot and killed. Those who were arrested were accused of carrying out acts of vandalism and arson at a Cop City construction site over a mile from the music festival under George’s domestic terror statute, although none of the arrest warrants tie any of the defendants directly to any illegal acts.
Cop City is yet another complex designed by the corporate state to train police in urban warfare. The plans include military-grade training facilities, a mock city to practice urban warfare, explosives, testing areas, dozens of shooting ranges, and a Black Hawk helicopter landing pad. “It is a war base where police will learn military-like maneuvers to kill Black people and control our bodies and movements,” Kwame Olufemi of Community Movement Builders points out. “The facility includes shooting ranges, plans for bomb testing, and will practice tear gas deployment. They are practicing how to make sure poor and working class people stay in line so when the police kill us in the streets again like they did to Rashard Brooks in 2020, they can control our protests and community response to how they continually murder our people,” he said.
But just as ominous as the militarization of domestic police forces and training complexes to turn police into internal armies of occupation is the use of terrorism laws to charge and imprison activists, protestors and dissidents. Former Chicago Tribune reporter Will Potter, in his book, Green is the New Red, documents how terrorism laws are used to crush dissent, especially dissent carried out by animal rights and environmental activists. He likens the campaign to McCarthyism in the 1950s and warns that we are on the cusp of cementing into place a police state.
Potter, who became a vegan when he was a student at the University of Texas, participated in a canvassing campaign organized by a group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty while working at the Tribune. The goal was to close down the laboratory of Huntingdon Life Sciences, which still uses animals for testing. The organizers were arrested for trespassing, and then Potter got a firsthand look at what was happening to civil liberties in the United States. Two FBI agents appeared at Potter’s apartment demanding information about the group. If he refused to cooperate, he was told his name would be included on the domestic terrorist list. Potter would eventually leave the paper to report on the government’s intimidation of activists, including nonviolent activists who spoke out against the corporate state and the seizure of political and economic power by the 1%. Joining me to discuss the Orwellian world being erected around us is Will Potter.
You open the book in the Chicago Tribune newsroom. We both come out of the newspaper industry. I think we both worked at one point in the Dallas Morning News, and there’s a story, you’re sent out to cover the killing of a child. And I think for those who don’t come out of that environment, they don’t understand the cynicism, maybe even numbness that takes place in those newsrooms and how difficult that is if you actually care. I mean, I always say there’s two types of reporters, the ones who care and the ones who don’t. That’s the real divide in a newsroom. It’s not politics. But let’s just open with that since we both come from that environment.
Will Potter:
Yeah, I think that’s a great observation. I mean, it’s something that journalists, we rarely ever talk about. That kind of environment is one in which in order to survive just the onslaught of daily news and blood and guts and violence and kind of despair that comes with it, you have to really get a hardened shell. And I think that’s kind of fetishized a little bit in journalism. We embrace that machismo and just kind of push full steam ahead without acknowledging trauma and acknowledging some of these things that we encounter. And that’s certainly an environment I felt I encountered at multiple newspapers. Like you said, I think like a lot of people, you go into news with ideas about making a difference in the world, educating the public, allowing and creating an environment for change and social change to happen. But it can be quite crushing and cynical, as well.
Chris Hedges:
Well, those news organizations will beat that out of you if you let them.
Will Potter:
Very quickly.
Chris Hedges:
Very quickly. Exactly. Let’s talk about the Huntingdon Labs. You were just handing out leaflets, I think, or something. I mean, it was pretty innocuous.
Will Potter:
Yeah.
Chris Hedges:
Explain what it was, why it’s important, and then I want to go in, because this was a pivotal moment in the animal rights movement.
Will Potter:
It was. This was a pivotal campaign, and in that moment when the FBI agents came to my door, that time period was pivotal in the campaign, also. And so as a little bit of background, this laboratory had been exposed multiple times by undercover investigators working with groups like PETA, and they had documented egregious acts of cruelty, things like punching beagle puppies repeatedly in the face because the technicians were frustrated at their small veins to get an injection or dissecting a monkey that was still alive. And all of this was caught on video and was used in a very savvy way to mobilize and push forward this emerging movement.
What was different about this campaign compared to other animal rights or other protest campaigns is they operated quite differently. I mean, they were not intended on having signs and banners outside of the laboratory because they knew the lab didn’t care. The people in the lab didn’t care and the people investing in this lab didn’t care. So they started targeting the finances of this company. They went after everyone from UPS to toilet paper suppliers. Anyone who had business in any way with the laboratory was the target of protests. Sometimes this was kind of spontaneous demonstrations, sometimes this was as simple as people anonymously putting stickers or wheat paste or breaking out a window. I mean, the campaign was really that diverse, from these really kind of small, seemingly insignificant acts of sabotage or even harassment to mass protests outside the laboratories.
What happened is that it was so incredibly successful internationally that it brought the campaign near bankruptcy. And as that was happening, these corporations mobilized their allies in Congress and they worked together behind closed doors in order to label these protest groups as terrorists and ultimately to convict them and send them to prison as terrorists, as well.
Chris Hedges:
And we should be clear, so Huntingdon, which still exists under another name, but it’s Envigo I think is who bought up-
Will Potter:
That’s right.
Chris Hedges:
Right. So at the time, it was killing between 71,000 and 180,000 animals a year, and these animals were being killed to test for household cleaners, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and food ingredients for major companies such as Procter and Gamble, Colgate, Palmolive. In the book, you write about the two kind of major organizations that confront of animal activists. One is the underground organization, that’s groups like Animal Liberation Front, and then the aboveground groups. And the underground groups I think at one point invaded the labs and caused significant damage. And the aboveground groups, the ones who ended up being prosecuted, engaged in nonviolent activity and organizing. But the relationship between those two groups, we’ll get into it later, but the ones who engaged in nonviolent traditional organizing ended up in essence being charged for the crimes of the underground organizers, even though they had nothing to do with it. But talk about those relationships.
Will Potter:
That’s really the heart of this entire protest campaign and the heart of why I think this case sets such a dangerous precedent for social movements. In the sixties in the anti-war movement, there was a phrase among activists that, “We didn’t do it but we dug it,” meaning I was not engaged or I don’t know who was engaged in illegal protest activity against the war, but it was loosely in the name of the same cause and it was nonviolent, and so I will support it. And that was the mentality of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. And specifically they ran a website, and on this website everything related to the campaign was published. Everything from those stickerings and wheat pastings that I mentioned all the way up to groups like the Animal Liberation Front doing things like stealing animals from laboratories and breaking into facilities connected to HLS, and also property destruction, vandalism, sabotage. In the scheme of this protest movement, though, there were no targeting of human beings. I mean, this is something that Animal Liberation Front has made sure of for decades and something the organizers of SHAC were very passionate about.
Chris Hedges:
SHAC, by the way, is Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.
Will Potter:
That’s right.
Chris Hedges:
That’s the organization that was organized to confront Huntingdon.
Will Potter:
They’re the ones who were organizing this protest campaign. And really by organizing, the government said this was a couple of people in a house in Philadelphia and in New Jersey that were running a website. And as news came in on the website, there was a real intensity around this at the time. I mean, this was kind of pre-social media. In a lot of ways, I would argue this was one of the first digital campaigns of this new era that relied heavily and even almost exclusively on online organizing. And so what the government argued, as you indicated, is that by the SHAC organizers, by the aboveground lawful groups saying through their words and their website that they support the ideology of those crimes and they also support people doing them, they thought that this was all legitimate in the name of this struggle, the government argued that this created a conspiracy and that conspiracy created an environment that allowed the illegal activity to take place.
So in other words, the people who ran the website were never accused at any point of doing any of the illegal things that were on the website or for that matter, the legal things that were on the website, but the government in this ambitious court case argued that they needed to be held responsible for creating a criminal conspiracy under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. So these activists were convicted of animal enterprise terrorism, is the name of the charge, conspiracy to commit that and conspiracy to violate the telecommunications law, which means that they were collaborating across state lines in order to protest this multinational company.
Chris Hedges:
So in your book, you write that the reason terrorism laws, this of course was in the wake of 9/11, the reason terrorism laws were employed against animal rights activists was because the corporations were being hurt. And they essentially prodded the political leadership in both parties, beholden to corporate money, of course, to declare these kinds of activities, even nonviolent activities, as acts of terrorism. They also, through tremendous resources, surveillance resources at these groups, I think if I remember correctly, in your book you say it’s the longest criminal investigation by the FBI in US history or something. You write about a woman, her name, she went by the name Anna. Her real name was Zoe Elizabeth Voss, a paid FBI informant. We saw this with Muslims after 9/11, where she provided the money, the logistics, at one point a cabin that the FBI wired to essentially prod people to discuss carrying out a bombing that never took place.
There’s this one poor 26-year-old kid who kind of falls for her and it was entrapment. I think he ended up spending a decade in prison, but the FBI withheld 2,500 pages of evidence. And so he got a what, a 20-year sentence roughly and served 10. You write that the FBI is estimated to have had 15,000 informants in these environmental and animal rights groups. Let’s talk about the tactics that were employed against these groups.
Will Potter:
I think the most important tactic is the recognition of the power of language. And that’s something that began really in the 1980s when industry groups made up, I mean they actually invented the term ecoterrorism and they were quite proud of it. And for the next several decades, as you know, there was an international focus on terrorism in a very different context. So in that time through the eighties and nineties, there wasn’t a lot of headway on these corporate efforts. I mean, there were gains being made, without a doubt, but what I found in my research is that after September 11th, the infrastructure and the strategies that were being developed and honed for decades leading up to 9/11 were implemented incredibly quickly and boldly after the attack, to the point where as first responders were still trying to clear survivors from the rubble after 9/11, you had multiple members of Congress speculating that the terrorist attacks were the work of environmentalists or animal rights activists. I mean, that’s the kind of climate that these groups created.
In that climate where the unreasonable becomes reasonable, where you’re blaming nonviolent groups or saboteurs for the most costly loss of life in US history, in that environment, they were able to kind of manipulate other structures to push this agenda. And what I would kind of summarize is that they really did this in three ways. There were three parts to their playbook. There were legal efforts, there were legislative efforts such as creating new terrorism laws and new protest restrictions, and then there was what I would call extra legal or operating outside of the law. And that’s where some of these informant tactics come in.
The FBI has been called to the carpet multiple times by their Inspector General’s office and oversight boards for the rampant misuse of informants. And that certainly has taken place in the animal rights and environmental movements, but this has also been corporate-driven, as in corporations hiring private investigators in mercenary firms that operate outside of the very little restrictions that the FBI has to pursue activists and to create dossiers on them. We’ve seen this not just in the campaigns we’ve talked about so far, but also in things like the Standing Rock protest and the Keystone Pipeline protests where these major corporations are sitting down, and I literally have some of the documents showing it, that they give PowerPoint presentations to law enforcement. They identify protestors, they recommend prison sentences in specific criminal statutes that can be used to go after their opposition. At really every step of the way, these corporate groups have sat down and worked in lockstep with the FBI and with those mercenary companies.
Chris Hedges:
Yeah. Well, you talk about fusion centers, so these are state programs that essentially collate or put together information coming from various law enforcement agencies, but they also work, as you point out in the book, with these corporate security firms. When I went to Standing Rock or you couldn’t, they blocked the roads, and the people blocking the roads were wearing Kevlar vests and carrying long-barrelled weapons with no identification. They were private security drawn from police, drawn from military. And so there’s this kind of centrifugal force where all of these entities are coming together to target these activists with tremendous amounts of resources. The film The Animal People is a documentary about this campaign, and in that documentary you show or there’s an attempt to show the staggering kind of sums of money and manpower that’s been put in to crush these groups.
Will Potter:
Oh, the amount of resources is just, it’s unbelievable. I mean, as you all with this show, you’re monitoring social movements and protest campaigns and you know how little resources these activists have. And so as one of the defendants, one of the protestors put it, when you see those court papers that say the United States versus Will or versus Chris or whatever it is, it really is that full weight of the US government combined with the full weight of the corporate state. In addition to some of the things you’ve mentioned like how this was the largest domestic terrorism investigation in US history, they’ve thrown just an ungodly amount of money into making these policies happen.
One thing that I would throw out is when these activists were awaiting prison sentences on the Huntingdon campaign, so they were already convicted under this ambitious previous law called the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. They were already being sentenced to prison as terrorists for a protest campaign. And politicians and members of Congress and also these corporate representatives were simultaneously arguing, “Our hands are tied. We need more power, we need more money, we need more funding, police resources.” And like you said, I think you put it quite well, that there is this kind of centrifugal force that emerges of this revolving door of state agencies and private sector, and really that’s what’s happened with this issue. Those forces together have worked over the last several decades to turn nonviolent protestors into the FBI’s, “Number one domestic terrorism threat.” And it’s really because of their money and influence.
Chris Hedges:
They also have twisted the courts. Maybe you can talk about the terrorism enhancement laws. These can add 20 years to sentences. They can, in some cases, quadruple sentences. And let’s be clear, these are nonviolent crimes.
Will Potter:
And this was something, the terrorism enhancement is something that was passed by Congress after the Oklahoma City bombings by right wing groups who killed, up until that time, was the most civilians that had ever been targeted. So in this kind of specter of fear of violence, that’s when this provision was passed. And instead, it’s been deployed to elevate the sentences of nonviolent environmental protestors that were convicted, for instance, as part of the Earth Liberation front. Those sentences not only are exacerbated by the terrorism enhancement, but it also redefines who these prisoners are.
I saw that personally visiting prisoners after they’ve been sentenced, and also in my interviews with countless former prisoners, that their experience once they’ve been classified that way is quite different. These activists in general have very little priors. They have no serious criminal history, and yet after being sentenced for their protest activity, they can end up in medium or even maximum security facilities. They are called red tagged by the BOP, by the Bureau of Prisons, and red carded. That means they have to sometimes carry and wear a large red card identifying them as a high risk terrorism inmate. They’re treated differently by guards, they’re singled out.
The ramifications of this in terms of from a human rights perspective extend far beyond just the disproportionate and I would call malicious sentencing of these protestors. It really redefines them. And I think that’s, to me, one of the most surprising takeaways of this language of terrorism is that even though it began as a public relations maneuver, it’s completely taken on a life of its own to the point where it’s worked its way into bureaucracies within power that kind of self-replicate these systems after people have even been convicted.
Chris Hedges:
Well, they’re put in management control units. I went out to Marion, Illinois, and I know you went out there as well in the book, which replaced Alcatraz as the kind of supermax prison. Now we have in Florence the kind of latest iteration of that. But I went out to visit Daniel Hale, who leaked the drone papers, and he, again, it’s a nonviolent crime. In fact, he shouldn’t even be in prison, but he, like these activists, was placed in a high security prison in the middle of farmland, the middle of nowhere, but in a special, highly restrictive unit. And that’s what’s happened to many of these activists.
Will Potter:
To be clear, I think when people, in my experience, start hearing about things like this, there’s a tendency to either think one, that can’t be true because this is the United States, or similarly, something like, “Well, this only happens in X, Y, or Z other country that has a disdain for human rights.” And the truth is that there’s actually a long history of using political prisons in the United States in these types of cases, including for social movements that we now regard by members of Congress even in these kind of heroic terms, the anti-war movement, the Black liberation Movement, the American Indian movement, all have been targeted. And many of those protestors ended up in experimental prisons.
What’s I think significant here is these communications management units were opened as clearly, explicitly political prisons for political prisoners, targeting prisoners because of their communications and their ideology. People were sent there because of their, “Anti-corporate and anti-government beliefs,” according to government documents. And as this is happening, it further codifies and cements political repression. It is stabilizing and really introducing what are quite extreme tactics of destroying and subverting social movements, and has turned them into something that’s now part of the official government apparatus. And these CMUs, these secretive prisons are now being codified into the law, and they are receiving more and more prisoners every year. What started as an, “Extreme response by the government for dangerous and violent prisoners,” is now being used against people that are very far from that. And I think that’s the mission creep that we see and that you’re really pointing to here.
Chris Hedges:
Yeah. We just have a few minutes left right in there about the loyalty oaths that mainstream environmental groups, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, National Wildlife Federation, were kind of called upon to denounce these underground groups, which unfortunately most of them rapidly did or quite willingly did. But let’s talk about where we are now. This has created the foundation for a very frightening kind of police state where any kind of dissent becomes terrorism. And that’s why I opened with the incident in Cop City.
Will Potter:
And that’s exactly why I’ve been following Cop City so closely as well, because the dynamics that we’ve talked about are really starkly on display in that campaign. Not just the repressive tactics, but the movement tactics, as well. I mean, it’s a similar dynamic to that Huntingdon Life Sciences campaign where in the Cop City protest, you have people that are protesting, writing letters, working with church groups, running websites, doing free concerts like you mentioned, offering free childcare, food, all of these kind of multiple aspects of movement organizing. And then you also have people that have sabotaged property and broken the law.
And what the state has done in this case is argue that all of it, the entire campaign is reflective of domestic terrorism, anarchism and threats to public safety. So that dynamic is still at play. So is that, I think it’s right to call a loyalty oath that’s being put on mainstream organizations. If you run a national group, it’s understandable why it would be tempting to come out and publicly condemn someone who vandalized a bulldozer because you run a nonprofit, you have donations and staff, and you’re not involved in protest activity like that, and you certainly don’t want to be at risk threatened by the FBI. And that’s the type of fear that they prey into.
And what happens, though, is when more mainstream and established groups start making public comments about the radicals with Cop City or the Anarchists, which is the kind of classic boogeyman that has rolled out, it drives a wedge. And I think in terms of state repression, the intention is to drive a wedge between these social movements inside themselves, between the aboveground and the more radical groups, and then to drive a wedge between Cop City protestors and everyone else in the more liberal or mainstream left. And they do that by really tightening the screws on mainstream organizations that have something to lose.
Chris Hedges:
Yeah. Although as you point out in your book, these nonviolent protestors ultimately get charged for acts they did not commit. I’m not going to go into the details. People should read the book and watch The Animal People, the documentary, but they weren’t even physically there. They didn’t even know these things were happening in many cases, but they’re charged.
Will Potter:
In the Cop City case, it gets even more just kind of surreal. I mean, you have bond hearings where protestors are being denied and police are pointing to mud on their shoes as evidence-
Chris Hedges:
Right, right, right.
Will Potter:
[inaudible 00:30:33]
Chris Hedges:
That’s right, muddy clothes.
Will Potter:
Muddy clothes, black hoodies. The raids of some of these activists that happened recently in Georgia, the warrant, I have to tell you, I don’t think either of us would look very good if we were raided, Chris. I mean, our bookshelves can be quite incriminating. And that’s the type of stuff that they’re listing in these warrants and then dragging into court as evidence of illegal activity. And I think that’s why it’s so important for mainstream organizations to fight back militantly against what is happening right now. Staying silent has never protected social justice groups from political repression like this, period. Historically, it has never worked. It has never worked to try to cozy up to corporations or to politicians hoping that they’re not going to be targeted in the backlash, because what happens every single time is at the point you become truly effective, at the point you become a true threat to business as usual is when the full weight of that apparatus is deployed.
So I think that what we’re seeing in Cop City, I’m not going to say I’m I optimistic or hopeful yet. I mean, I am a journalist after all, but it is quite inspiring, I’ll say, to see church groups, community groups, and the diversity of voices that have come out against Cop City. And to me, I think that’s really the best defense that we can have against these tactics is bringing everyone under the tent and saying very loudly that we’re part of this same movement, the same cause, and we’re not going to be singled out as terrorists to stop us.
Chris Hedges:
Great. I want to thank The Real News Network and its production team, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, Dwayne Gladden, David Hebdon, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com.
Speaker 4:
And the Chris Hedges report gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material with Chris and his guest.
Chris Hedges:
So in this second part, I want to ask you about the underground/aboveground groups. I was very involved in the Occupy movement and very critical of the black bloc and critical of property destruction, because I thought it was effectively used by the police and the state to demonize the Occupy movement. And it didn’t achieve much, especially in cities like Oakland, where throwing a trash can through a window in a Oakland is… Ishmael Reed, who lives in Oakland said, “If they want to throw a trash can through a window, why don’t they go up to La Jolla where the rich people live and throw a trash can through,” Mitt Romney apparently has some kind of estate up there, his place.
So I’ve always been very critical. The other thing, and I think this is captured in your book, and it was something that I often said to Occupy activists, is you just go back and read COINTELPRO. That’s kind of the primer on how it works. They have so many resources that the only effective strategy is transparency and the kind of the azan provokatörs, they love the black bloc because they could cover their faces so they couldn’t be identified. But you’re much more forgiving to the underground groups. But I just wanted you to address that.
Will Potter:
Yeah, I think those are valid critiques. I feel like the more I’ve been immersed in this for so many years now, the more I’ve kind of come to believe one, how little I know about ultimately what tactics work and what don’t, but to a greater point, seeing the response of the FBI and the state to a wide range of protest activity. So I think that the argument could be made that seeing property destruction like you see in a black bloc protest, it could give the immediate pretext in that moment for a political crackdown on those groups of spreading to other movements at that time. But what I’ve seen more broadly is that the repression that activists experience seems to have very little to do with the legality or the tenor of their actual tactics, if that makes sense.
So for instance, the underground groups who have done things like break into laboratories, steal animals, burn down buildings, I mean, at some cases these are very serious property crimes that someone could have been hurt. But what we’ve seen in the last few years is the FBI and the industry, I guess on the animal rights side of things more broadly, has focused on national groups. They’ve been much more concerned with undercover investigators in criminalizing photography and people that document animal abuse on farms.
And so I guess to respond to your question, I see that there is kind of a spectrum that exists in protest activity, and really the determining factor of whether any of that activity is going to be hit with intense state repression is whether it starts moving the needle. I feel a little bit naive, I’ll admit, in the last few years to see how quickly, rapidly and forcefully these tactics have been deployed against activists who had no sensible connection whatsoever to anything illegal. Right? I mean, for years, that’s what they said in going after the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. “We have to crack down on these radicals. We have to go after the black bloc.”
And what we’re seeing is that the FBI seems much less concerned with that on the whole right now than it does about true movement building. So I don’t know where this goes from here. I don’t know if those tactics are going away. I feel like anytime that there is a heavy-handed or a violent response from the state, we might see protest tactics like that, but we’re also seeing in Cop City, I think a lot more sophistication and movement creation and bringing lots of different people together and not, I guess I’ll say not turning some people off with some of those tactics that you mentioned.
Chris Hedges:
I want to talk about what’s happened. At the end, the movement, the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty Movement does cripple the lab, but it’s bailed out, and then eventually it merges with other laboratories, Harlan Labs, NDA Analytics, et cetera, and creates this new super company, Envigo. What’s the lesson from that?
Will Potter:
Well, it’s kind of a similar story from your time in Occupy, right? That they’re too big to fail. That’s what the industry said with HLS, with vivisection industry, but also just all these diverse industries that have something to do with animals rallied behind them because they said, “If HLS falls, if this lab falls, everybody’s going to be vulnerable.” And I think that kind of too big to fail mentality is what caused people to rally behind such an abusive, corrupt facility as this one. And it also really speaks to just the overwhelming power of these industries.
My work focuses on political repression, which is pretty dark and depressing beat, but you also see the strength of social movements. And in this case, the industry was absolutely terrified about a protest campaign that was being run by a half a dozen people, allegedly in the United States with a couple of computers and who were bringing a multinational company to the point where it’s kicked off the New York Stock Exchange and kicked down to the pink sheets in the market makers. I mean, this was the power of this movement, and it just rattled them to their core. And I think that fear is still there. I mean, that’s why we still, there isn’t a campaign like this happening right now, but I think you’re still seeing this level of repression and kind of paranoia by corporations because they know it’s possible and they know this is always right around the corner.
Chris Hedges:
Well, they also know what they’re doing, which is why they hide it.
Will Potter:
Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt. Jon Stewart used to do a good bit on his show called Evil or Stupid, where he would debate something and be like, “Oh, this is happening because they’re so horribly evil.” And then the other guy would say, “Oh no, it’s because they’re so stupid.” And I kind of do that a lot with this issue, but I think I firmly come down on the side of evil. I have to say that after seeing this for so long, there is nothing unintentional about any of these maneuvers. There’s some people that are just following orders. But as you mentioned with the SHAC case, when that was happening in New Jersey, Chris Christie was one of the people that was really trying to make a name off of it, just to give you an idea. And these are political opportunists. They’ve used this war on activism to make a name for themselves as being tough on crime or tough on terrorism and to catapult their careers.
I think we’re still going to be seeing that for quite some time. In the fallout of January 6th and the rise of fascist groups internationally, more and more people are going to be fighting back because we don’t have a choice but to fight back against it. And I think that state apparatus is going to be employed against them, as well.
Chris Hedges:
Great. That was Will Potter. His book is Green is the New Red, and you can see the documentary, which he is in, The Animal People, it’s on, where is it? On Amazon?
Will Potter:
Yeah, you can watch it on all the streaming stuff.
Chris Hedges:
All the streamings have it. Yeah, it’s a great documentary. Thanks, Will.
This story was produced by Richochet Media and Indiginews, and is being co-published by The Real News.
As he watched the last plane lumber down the runway, Chief Allan Adam was finally able to breathe freely again.
He had just posted a live video from the Fort Chipewyan airport on the evening of May 31, documenting the last flight out with evacuees fleeing impending disaster. A wildfire was advancing approximately seven kilometres from his remote community, which is accessible only by boat or plane.
In May, roughly 2.7 million hectares of forest — an area equal to about five million football fields — were burned to the ground in Canada…Over the last 10 years, the average number of hectares burned in the same month was just 150,000.
But the relief was short-lived. The straight-shooting leader of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, one of three Indigenous communities in Alberta who call Fort Chipewyan home, was abruptly hit with biting pain.
“That was the stress that hit me, right after that post, that’s when the pain came to my neck,” he said in a telephone interview the evening of June 1, between back-to-back meetings with local leaders, authorities, and firefighting officials.
Despite the searing ache in his neck, he continues to roll with the punches. The homes and livelihoods of nearly 1,000 people are on the line. It’s the first time in anyone’s living memory that the hamlet, located about 300 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, has been under a mandatory evacuation order. Chief Adam — together with Billy-Joe Tuccaro, chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, and Kendrick Cardinal, president of the Fort Chip Métis — has stayed behind to oversee efforts to save his homelands.
“We had to get everybody out. Everything that we’ve done, that was our main focus, to get everybody out immediately. And then once that was accomplished, it was a relief for me because now we can focus our attention on preparedness (for) what’s coming.”
Record heat waves and dry conditions have sparked an unrivaled wildfire season of destruction across the country, affecting almost every province and territory.
In May, roughly 2.7 million hectares of forest — an area equal to about five million football fields — were burned to the ground in Canada, said Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair at a press conference. Over the last 10 years, the average number of hectares burned in the same month was just 150,000.
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told reporters at the same press conference that the rampant infernos are caused by climate change.
“It’s a simple fact that Canada is experiencing the impacts of climate change, including more frequent and more extreme wildfires,” he said.
Chief Adam is all too familiar with the consequences of climate change, and particularly the contamination of his territories. Fort Chipewyan, commonly referred to as Fort Chip, is downstream from Alberta’s notorious tar sands, one of the largest oil developments in the world.
The settlement is perched on the tip of Lake Athabasca, the largest body of water in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Known as the oldest community in the province, it once served as a hub for the Indigenous Nations who live up and down the mighty Athabasca River, as well as the European settlers who trekked north for trade. But since commercial-scale extraction of the oil sands began in 1967 — and then expanded to fuel the economic wellspring of Canada — the water, land and air quality of the vast Indigenous territories downstream has deteriorated.
Finding deformed fish and polluted water here is a normal occurrence. And dozens of Fort Chip residents have succumbed to a rare strain of bile duct cancer.
In April, Chief Adam testified before a House of Commons committee hearing in Ottawa to decry the release of millions of litres of toxic tailings waste into the Athabasca River in two separate incidents involving Imperial Oil’s Kearl mine.
Earlier, he had predicted his community would become environmental refugees.
Now, Fort Chip could be swept away by out-of-control flames.
“I tell them this,” he said during the phone interview, explaining that he confronts the Alberta and federal governments about climate change.
“I speak with them all the time and we hold them very accountable. The climate change issue is not going to go away. And we’re gonna have to deal with it — and you (governments) are gonna have to deal with us.”
Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site north of Fort McMurray, Alberta on Thursday, June 1, 2023. Over 1000 people have been evacuated from Fort Chipewyan as wildfires threaten the community downriver from the oil sands. Amber BrackenDwight Courtorielle, 48, with his son Kade McKay, 10 months in Fort McMurray, Alberta on Thursday, June 1, 2023. Over 1000 people have been evacuated from Fort Chipewyan as wildfires threaten the community downriver from the oil sands. Amber BrackenRob Leavitt, right, and Preston Wanderingspirit watch smoke on the horizon after clearing trees for a fire break in the Allison Bay area of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta on Friday, June 2, 2023. Over 1000 people have been evacuated from Fort Chipewyan as wildfires threaten the community downriver from the oil sands. Amber Bracken
Feels like 2016 all over again
About 250 kilometres south from Fort Chip, the boat launch in Fort McKay First Nation — a community of 800 people about 58 kilometres north of Fort McMurray — is clogged with dozens of docked boats. Volunteers are patrolling the river day and night, searching for evacuees whose boats may have gotten stuck or broken down.
It’s déjà vu for Fort McKay residents, who are survivors of the worst natural disaster in Canadian history. They were forced to flee their homes during the massive 2016 blaze that ravaged Fort McMurray.
Even so, ushering Fort Chip evacuees to safety is a treacherous undertaking, according to Fort McKay Métis Nation president Ron Quintal.
“We haven’t gotten hardly any rain yet. Wait ’til July. Wait ’til it’s really hot. Oh, it’ll be worse. It’s scary. Maybe the whole country will burn.”
Stanley Shortman, fort chip resident
“There’s a combination of the smoke, of the water coming up and having sticks in the water and traveling at night — it’s a concern for damage to your boat and could cause an emergency,” he says while visiting evacuees at a hotel in Fort McMurray.
Quintal directed his staff to focus on comforting the displaced, including whole families with children and elders who had made the eleventh-hour trip.
“We were there when families were pulling in,” says Quintal, his voice pinched with emotion. “You try to put on a happy face. These kids, they’re afraid, you know, they’ve had to leave their homes, given they’re an isolated community. And we let them know that you’re safe here, we’re here to help you.”
Jimmy Shortman, 64, waits at the boat launch for Ginger, his German Shepard, and her six three-week-old puppies to be delivered by a peace officer. He fled his home in Fort Chip by boat along with his wife and granddaughter. His beloved dog was cared for by officials in Fort McKay while he escorted his family to a hotel in Fort McMurray.
Shortman also fled the infamous Fort McMurray blaze in 2016. Now, he’s experiencing flashbacks of flames, falling ashes, and traffic jams holding back frantic passengers desperate to escape.
A former firefighter, he witnessed the moment the current wildfire ignited near his home community.
“When that lightning happened on Saturday in Fort Chip, I was outside my house, sitting on the deck. All of a sudden, lightning strikes.” His brown eyes widen as he describes the jolt of electricity hitting the ground.
“It started that night, because the lightning did it. It got bigger and bigger, and the wind was picking up.”
He did not expect the blaze would burn out of control and turn so many lives upside down. He describes people panicking in their rush to get out of Fort Chip. “My wife was scared and crying. Everybody was excited to just get out of there.”
“There were 14 boats trying to get out at the same time, and that’s unheard of. You couldn’t even see across the lake — it was covered in smoke. I don’t panic, but.…” His eyes briefly well with tears. “The only thing I worried about was my wife and the little girl.”
Now, he’s happy to be heading out to his cabin along the river with his brother, Stanley Shortman, about an hour and a half south of the fire. He feels most comfortable there, as do hundreds of other Fort Chip families whose cabin homes dot the shoreside. They have a kinship with the land and water. Many, like Shortman, spend half their lives in the wilderness of their territories.
Shortman says he will clean the yard around his cabin while he waits out the fire. But he predicts the situation will intensify.
“Look how hot May was.” Shaking his head, he emphasizes that the dry weather isn’t helping. “We haven’t gotten hardly any rain yet. Wait ’til July. Wait ’til it’s really hot. Oh, it’ll be worse. It’s scary. Maybe the whole country will burn.”
Loretta Waquan sorts care packages for evacuees in Fort McKay, Alberta on Friday, June 2, 2023. Three boats delivered eight care packages to evacuees staying in cabins. Each cabin received: one 10lb bag of flour, dried beans and barley, bread, 20lbs of potatoes, evaporated milk, canned tomatoes, baking powder, canned ham, canned corned beef, minute rice, two flats of canned soup, oats, vegetable oil, chocolate, coffee, red rose tea, arrowroot cookies, macaroni, powdered milk, jam, sugar, chocolate chip cookies, powdered coffee creamer, onions, oranges, apples, granola bars, honey, canned beans, water, and lard. Amber BrackenSmoke hangs over oilsands tailings ponds north of Fort McMurray, Alberta on Friday, June 2, 2023. Over 1000 people have been evacuated from Fort Chipewyan as wildfires threaten the community downriver from the oil sands. Amber BrackenMadeline Piche, 93, holds the rosary she evacuated with at the elders residence in Fort McKay, Alberta on Thursday, June 1, 2023. At 93-years-old, Piche is the oldest resident of Fort Chipewyan and says she is praying for everyone as they navigate the crisis. Amber Bracken
‘Praying helps’
The oldest resident evacuated from Fort Chip rests in her bed at the long-term care facility in Fort McKay. Madelaine Piche, 93, clutches a sparkling rosary, her milky brown eyes conveying a gentle naivety.
“I’m so tired,” she says with a sigh. “I’m scared, I was nervous inside the plane.”
Along with several other elders, Piche was airlifted out of Fort Chip and transported to the Fort McKay facility on May 30. She’s comfortable, she says, and the food is “good here.”
The view of the river outside her window reminds her of home.
Now Piche — grandmother of 43 and great-grandmother to countless great-grandchildren — patiently waits for one of her daughters to visit from Fort McMurray.
She cries as she prays for her hometown, the only place she’s ever lived.
“Fort Chip is beautiful.… Praying helps,” she says with a whisper. “I pray a lot for everybody and for it to stop burning.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of displaced residents are scattered in various hotels throughout Fort McMurray. The Municipality of Wood Buffalo’s Emergency Social Services department is accepting donations of essential supplies such as toiletries, clothing, diapers, baby wipes and menstrual products. Families gather in hotel parking lots to catch up on the latest updates about the wildfires and let their children play on the grass.
But essential supplies for cabin dwellers are needed.
Riding the river
Mikisew Cree Nation evacuees Matthew Coutoreille and Yancey Kaskamin volunteer to deliver packages of food and water to nine cabins spread out along the river. They work alongside Coutoreille’s father, Lloyd Donovan, a resident of Fort McKay.
After sorting through various dried goods, gassing up, and loading their boats, the crew embarks on a Friday morning mission that will last until dusk.
Coutoreille, 36, has travelled the river since he was a young boy. He knows every bend swirling throughout the hundreds of kilometres of his homelands. He studies the current and weaves in and around sandbars, islands and debris to safely navigate his boat.
“My grandpa was one of the old-timers that used to come up and down this river,” he says in a calm and steady voice.
At an emergency meeting that evening of approximately 200 people, including local leaders, authorities, firefighters and community volunteers, one person yells out that they will work through the night to protect Fort Chip.
“You always have to have an eye out here. When you’re travelling with the old-timers, they tell you where the rocks are, where the sticks are and where to go. So I’ve learned from them.”
The river is ever-changing and unpredictable. Coutoreille is an environmental monitor for the Mikisew Cree. He observes the dwindling water levels as a result of impacts from industry and B.C. Hydro’s damming system. It makes maneuvering the river more dangerous.
“You can tell how much water dropped here and if it’s safe. And it’s gotten worse over the years because of water levels. Now everything is just drying up.”
A thick, smoggy gray haze blankets the horizon. Another wildfire to the east of the river a few hours south of Fort Chip is colliding with the smoke blowing in from there — as if Armageddon were descending upon the territory.
But Courtoreille isn’t afraid. He’s fixated on the task of helping his neighbours. Approaching the mouth of Lake Athabasca, he slows to assess the strength of the winds.
“It’s going to be rough.” He winks with a slight smile and takes a shallow breath.
After pulling on a hoodie and securing the boat canopy, he confers with his father and Kaskamin. They will steer their boats in the direction of the northeast-blowing winds.
Courtoreille nods as if to reassure me as he explains his boat is designed to take on water at the bow. If the waves are not navigated properly, they can swamp an open boat or capsize it. He’s crossed the lake in poorer conditions and is confident in his ability to safely do it again.
“Let’s get ’er done!” yells Donovan.
Motors roar in succession. Courtoreille leads the way to create a trail for the ensuing boats to have a smoother ride. After a harrowing 15-minute journey of dodging full-length logs and climbing whitecaps that crash against the boat, Courtoreille securely guides us to a bay in Fort Chip.
Whirling sounds of helicopters flying to and from the small airport penetrate the stillness of the near-empty hamlet. Pickup trucks, emergency vehicles and ATVs intermittently race between the emergency command centre in the middle of town and areas that personnel are working to fireproof.
Sheets of smoke billow into the sky less than three kilometres from Alison Bay, a residential area of the Mikisew Cree Nation on the boundaries of Fort Chip. Workers have dug trenches to the lake there to make the water more accessible.
Excavators clear fields of trees and shrubs surrounding the Mikisew community and Fort Chip. Pumps connected to water hoses supply a web of sprinklers attached to the rooftops of homes and other structures around town.
At an emergency meeting that evening of approximately 200 people, including local leaders, authorities, firefighters and community volunteers, one person yells out that they will work through the night to protect Fort Chip.
Chief Adam echoes the sentiment: whatever it takes to keep the fire at bay.
“We can cut grass, remove all the garbage and debris, and do all these little things,” he tells the crowd, appearing exhausted but unwavering.
“We will make it happen. If the fire does come into the community, we will assist in some way with the fire department,” he says. “But the forest fire, that belongs to Alberta Forestry and the professional firefighters. Now a lot of prayers are with us from other communities. Stay strong.”
After a hot meal, volunteers line up to attest to their skills so officials can enter them into a database.
It has been stressful to coordinate a community-led emergency operation at times, says Jay Telegdi, intergovernmental relations senior manager for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. Yet he has been down this road before. He helped evacuate members of Fort McKay Métis Nation in 2016. Now he buckles down to make sure every community member on the ground is assigned a task.
Evacuee John Edmund Mercredi, 84, plays the fiddle in Fort McKay, Alberta on Thursday, June 1, 2023. Over 1000 people have been evacuated from Fort Chipewyan as wildfires threaten the community downriver from the oil sands. Amber BrackenA dog eyes an overnight offering of coffee and cookies for residents and first responders at Chiefs Corner gas station and corner store in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta on Saturday, June 3, 2023. Over 1000 people have been evacuated from Fort Chipewyan as wildfires threaten the community downriver from the oil sands. Amber BrackenSprinklers protect houses on the edge of town in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta on Friday, June 2, 2023. Over 1000 people have been evacuated from Fort Chipewyan as wildfires threaten the community downriver from the oil sands. Amber Bracken
No time to contemplate causes
Calvin Waquan, Mikisew Cree, is the general manager of the Chief’s Corner gas station and convenience store in Fort Chip. He didn’t question staying behind to keep the store open when others closed their businesses down and left. After kissing his wife and two young children goodbye at the airport so they could fly to safety and find shelter in a Fort McMurray hotel, he sprang into action.
He cooks meals every day for up to 150 people in his store’s kitchen and caters to the varied schedules of anyone needing cigarettes, snacks or toiletries. He’s tallying the purchases on a charge basis, having buyers sign receipts for reimbursement from the province, which he says will be covering the full costs.
“I’m here to serve,” he says while mopping the store floor.
“I know one guy in town already passed out and fainted. So I’m making sure I get a lot of fruit and vegetables in me. And I don’t want my wife to come home right now.” He stops to laugh. “Because it’s pretty messy around the kitchen at home. But I’ve been trying to listen to what she used to tell me about taking in nutrients and vitamins.”
“It’s tough because it’s emotional. It’s tough on my daughter, she cries and then I start crying. The way I see fires, what’s happening with Mother Nature, it’s kind of resetting and teaching us a lesson to slow down maybe and appreciate what we have.”
Calvin Waquan, Mikisew Cree, general manager of the Chief’s Corner gas station and convenience store in Fort Chip
Waquan is a former elected councillor of the Mikisew Cree Nation. He lobbied governments for compensation and accountability from the oil industry for damages to his territories. Lately, he’s noticed rapid changes to the seasons.
“We had the winter road come in way late this year, the water was open right until January. And now this.”
But in an active emergency, there isn’t much time to contemplate root causes. Every night since the evacuation, before he heads home to catch a few hours of sleep, Waquan sets up a table outside the store with two filled coffee urns, cream, sugar and a package of cookies for workers.
He speaks to his family daily, although he tries to avoid video calling them.
“It’s tough because it’s emotional. It’s tough on my daughter, she cries and then I start crying. The way I see fires, what’s happening with Mother Nature, it’s kind of resetting and teaching us a lesson to slow down maybe and appreciate what we have. And I think that’s what the families are learning and especially myself. Not having the kids being in here grabbing a slush, kids running by to go to the park or just hanging out on the concrete outside — I miss seeing the kids and all the noise that’s always going on.”
Lifelong Fort Chip resident Doris Cardinal works at the K’ai Talle Market a few blocks from Chief’s Corner. She and her husband, Happy, chose not to leave.
“This is my home and I wasn’t going to go anywhere,” she says while having a break outside the market. “I’d be afraid if I see the fire coming over the hills, then I’d run for the water.”
Cardinal is still processing the news that her cabin burned down two days prior. The home she and her husband built along the river just three years ago was their retirement plan. It was located north of Fort Chip, around the corner of what’s called Devil’s Gate, by Little Rapids, she explains.
She grew up on the land and river. It’s a special place she goes to wind down and take in the northern lights while sipping strong tea.
“Some of the leaders went up in the choppers and took a snapshot. And then my niece told me my house burned. I shed tears, I’m not gonna lie, and I swore. It was not the greatest feeling.”
Cardinal’s was one of several cabins devoured by the wildfire. Her husband vows to rebuild one day. For now, Cardinal is immersed in keeping the market afloat and lifting the morale of others on the ground.
“As long as the robins are singing, I’ll be okay,” she says with a chuckle.
Enter the army
That afternoon the Fort Chip airport is abuzz with anticipation as local rangers, chiefs and workers congregate to welcome the Canadian military. A gray Lockheed C-130 Hercules plane rumbles down the airstrip as a crowd watches in awe from behind a metal fence.
The warplane is carrying 65 soldiers dressed in camo and combat boots ready to battle the flames. It will return with dozens more soldiers later that evening.
The encroaching wildfire is less than three kilometres away, and smoke is descending on the site.
Chief Adam paces the parking lot while recording a Facebook live video. His long silver hair is tied back, and his shoulders slightly droop from an overwhelming cocktail of emotions. His eyes light up at the sight of the incoming army, and a grin emerges.
Kendrick Cardinal, the Fort Chip Métis Nation president, greets each soldier with a handshake as they march to an awaiting bus that will shuttle them to their command post.
He feels relieved. “I’m happy the army is here to help us out. It’s more manpower. With their help we’ll try to extinguish the fire as soon as possible.”
Officials are unsure when it will be safe for evacuees to return home. As of June 8, the wildfire has scorched over 31,000 hectares, and firefighters have so far been able to hold it back from Fort Chip.
But firefighters have their work cut out for them across the country. According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, there are over 400 fires actively burning in Canada, 240 of which are deemed out of control.
The effects of the wildfires are far-reaching. A thick haze drifted into parts of the northern United States mid-week, blotting out the sun, and creating a Code Red air quality level for millions of people.
Chief Adam notes a large influx of moose flies swarming the airport. The large insects, known for sending irritated moose into a frenzy, bite chunks of human and animal flesh in order to reproduce.
But it’s too early for moose flies, he says. They usually don’t appear until well into July.
It’s another sign something is off with the patterns of Mother Nature.
“Climate change is such a part of this, everything ties into it,” he says with frustration.
“Their let-it-burn policy has to change because it’s gonna get worse. It’s burning out of control.”
A pointed message spray painted on a fence in Fort McKay, Alberta on Thursday, June 1, 2023. Over 1000 people have been evacuated from Fort Chipewyan as wildfires threaten the community downriver from the oil sands. Amber BrackenCalvin Waquan in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta on Saturday, June 3, 2023. Although they have been running short staffed, the family has kept Chiefs Corner open to help care for people fighting fire—and have given away all merchandise except for cigarettes and gas. Amber BrackenAthabasca Chipewyan First Nation chief Allen Adam watches military arrive to help fight fires in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta on Saturday, June 3, 2023. Amber Bracken
Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau says Pacific security is about the security of the Pacific peoples and their way of life as identified by Forum Leaders in the Boe Declaration.
Kalsakau said this reaffirmed climate change as the single greatest threat to regional security.
The PM was speaking at the opening of the Pacific Fusion headquarters in Port Vila on Tuesday, alongside Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.
He said Vanuatu, with the world’s first climate change refugees with the relocation in 2005 of 100 villagers in Torba Province, “will always consider climate change its top priority”.
He said climate change is real, an existential threat, impinging on the security and stability of all nations.
“We do not have to look too far to see how the increased intensity of climate change-induced tropical cyclones wreak havoc on the daily lives and livelihoods of our people and set us back years in our development,” said Kalsakau.
He said Vanuatu’s Pacific brothers also faced human security challenges caused by the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands (by the US), Mororoa Atoll (France) and Australia (United Kingdom).
‘Our reefs are dying’
“With the effects of global warming and nuclear testing, our ocean is getting warmer, our reefs are dying and fishes are now very scarce.
“Our children and grandchildren are bound to never experience what we’ve enjoyed in our childhood.
“The maintenance and sustenance of our marine resources must be the top priority of our Pacific Leaders.”
Kalsakau said there were other pressing issues such as the Fukushima nuclear waste water discharge and AUKUS.
“I say again that Pacific security is about the security of our Pacific peoples and way of life.
“This is why Vanuatu stood alongside our Pacific brothers and sisters to produce the Rarotonga Treaty. Which brings me to today’s very special occasion.
“The Pacific Fusion Centre is guided by the regional security priorities identified by the Boe Declaration and supports regional decision-making on these shared security priorities,” he said.
The centre, which is funded by Australia and to be run in collaboration with Pacific Forum member states, will aim to provide training and analysis on regional security issues.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A bill introducing harsh penalties and extending the scope of a law applying to those who obstruct public places has been passed after an all-night sitting by the South Australian Legislative Council this week, reports veteran investigative journalist Wendy Bacon — herself twice imprisoned for free speech.
South Australia now joins New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland, states which have already passed anti-protest laws imposing severe penalties on people who engage in peaceful civil disobedience.
However, South Australia’s new law carries the harshest financial penalties in Australia.
Thirteen Upper House Labor and Liberal MPs voted for the Bill, opposed by two Green MPs and two SABest MPs. The government faced down the cross bench moves to hold an inquiry into the bill, to review it in a year, or add a defence of “reasonableness”.
The Summary Offences (Obstruction of Public Places) Amendment Bill 2023 was introduced into the House Assembly by Premier Peter Malinauskas the day after Extinction Rebellion protests were staged around the Australian Petroleum and Exploration Association (APPEA) annual conference on May 17.
The most dramatic of these protests was staged by 69-year-old Meme Thorne who abseiled off a city bridge causing delays and traffic to be diverted.
Meanwhile, the gas lobby APPEA which is financed by foreign fossil fuel companies has stopped publishing its (public) financial statements. Questions put for this story were ignored but we will append a response should one be available.
The APPEA conference is a major gathering of oil and gas companies that was bound to attract protests. Its membership covers 95 pecent of Australia’s oil and gas industry and many other companies who supply goods and services to fossil fuel industries.
The dramatic climate protest staged by 69-year-old Meme Thorne who abseiled off an Adelaide bridge last month. Video: The Independent
The principal sponsors of this year’s conference were corporate giants Exxon-Mobil and Woodside.
Since March, Extinction Rebellion South Australia has been openly planning protests to draw attention to scientific evidence showing that any expansion of fossil fuel industries risks massive global disruption and millions of deaths.
The new laws will not apply to those arrested last week, several of whom have already been sentenced under existing laws.
In fact, when SA Attorney-General Kyam Maher was asked about the protests on May 17 shortly after the abseiling incident, he told the Upper House that “there are substantial penalties for doing things that can impede or restrict things like emergency services. I know that (police) . . . have in the past and will continue to do, enforce the laws that we have.”
Sensing that something was in the wind, he said he would be open to suggestions from the opposition.
Fines up 66 times, prison sentence introduced That afternoon, SA Opposition Leader and Liberal David Speirs handed the government a draft bill. This was finalised by parliamentary counsel overnight and whipped through the Lower House on May 18, without debate or scrutiny.
It took 20 minutes from start to finish: as one Upper House MP said, it would take “longer to do a load of washing”.
While Malinauskas and Speirs thanked each other for their cooperation, some MPs had not seen the unpublished bill before they passed it.
The new law introduces maximum penalties of A$50,000 (66 times the previous maximum fine) or a prison sentence of three months.
The maximum fine was previously $750, and there was no prison penalty.
If emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) are called to a protest, those convicted can also be required to pay emergency service costs. The scope of the law has also been widened to include “indirect” obstruction of a public place.
This means that if you stage a protest and the police use 20 emergency vehicles to divert traffic, you could be found guilty under the new section and be liable for the costs.
Even people handing out pamphlets about vaping harm in front of a shop, or workers gathering on a footpath to demand better pay, could fall foul of the laws.
An SABest amendment to the original bill removing the word “reckless” restricts its scope to intentional acts.
The APPEA oil and gas conference in Adelaide last month triggered protests. Image: Extinction Rebellion/Michael West Media
Peter Malinauskus told Radio Fiveaa on Friday that the new laws aimed to deter “extremists” who protested “with impunity” by crowd sourcing funds to pay their fines.
In speaking about the laws, Malinaukas, Maher and their right-wing media supporters have made constant references to emergency services, and ambulances. But no evidence has emerged that ambulances were delayed.
The author contacted SA Ambulances to ask if any ambulances were held up on May 17, and if they were delayed, whether Thorne was told. SA Ambulance Services acknowledged the question but have not yet answered.
The old ambulance excuse Significantly, the SA Ambulance Employees Union has complained about the “alarming breadth” of the laws and reminded the Malinauskas government that in the lead-up to last year’s state election, Labor joined Greens, SABest and others in protests about ambulance ramping, which caused significant traffic delays.
The constant references to emergencies are reminiscent of similar references in NSW. When protesters Violet Coco and firefighter Alan Glover were arrested on the Sydney Harbour Bridge last year, police included a reference to an ambulance in a statement of facts.
The ambulance did not exist and the false statement was withdrawn but this did not stop then Labor Opposition leader, now NSW Premier Chris Minns repeating the allegation when continuing to support harsh penalties even after a judge had released Coco from prison.
It later emerged that the protesters had agreed to move if it was necessary to make way for an ambulance.
The new SA law places a lot of discretion in the hands of the SA police to decide how to use resources and assess costs. The SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens left no doubt about his hostility to disruptive protests when he said in reference to last week’s abseiling incident, “The ropes are fully extended across the street. So we can’t, as much as we might like to, cut the rope and let them drop.”
In Parliament, Green MP Robert Simms condemned this statement, noting that it had not been withdrawn.
In court, the police prosecutor (as NSW prosecutors have often done) argued that Thorne, who has been arrested in previous protests, should be refused bail.
Her lawyer Claire O’Connor SC reminded that courts around the country had ruled bail could not be denied to protesters as a form of punishment.
Shock jocks, News Corp, back new laws She said that, at worst, her client faced a maximum fine of $1250 and three-month prison term if convicted — but added she intended to plead not guilty.
“You cannot isolate a particular group of offenders because of their motivation and treat them differently because of their beliefs,” she said. The magistrate granted Thorne bail until July.
For now the South Australian government has satisfied the radio shock jocks, Newscorp’s Adelaide Advertiser (which applauded the tough penalties), authoritarian elements in the SA police, and the Opposition.
But it has been well and truly wedged. After a fairly smooth first year in power, it now finds itself offside with a massive coalition of civil society, environmental groups, South Australian unions, the SA Law Society and the Council for Social Services, the Greens and SA Best.
In less than two weeks, Premier Malinkauskas’s new law was condemned by a full page advertisement in the Adelaide Advertiser that was signed by human rights, legal, civil society, environmental and activist organisations; faced two angry street rallies organised to demonstrate opposition to the laws; and was roundly criticised by a range of peak legal and human rights organisations.
Back to the past Worst of all from the government’s point of view, SA Unions accused Malinkaskas of trashing South Australia’s proud progressive history.
“South Australian union members have fought for over a century to improve our living standards and rights at work. It took just 22 minutes for the government to pass a Bill in the House of Assembly attacking our rights to take the industrial action that made that possible.
“Their Bill is a mess and must be stopped,” SA Unions stated in a post on their official Facebook page.
In hours long speeches during the night, Green MPs Robert Simms and Tammie Franks and SABest Frank Pangano and Connie Bonaros detailed the history of protests that have led to progressive changes, including in South Australia.
They read onto the parliamentary record letters from organisations condemning both the content and unprecedented manner in which the laws were passed as undermining democracy.
Their message was crystal clear — peaceful disobedience is at the heart of democracy and there can be no peaceful disobedience without disruption.
Simms wore a LGBTQI activist pin to remind people that as a gay man he would never have been able to become a politician if it was not for the disruptive US-based Stonewall Riots and the early Sydney Mardi Gras, in which police arrested scores of people.
Protest is about “disrupting routines, people are making a noise and getting attention of people in power . . . change is led by people who are on the street, not made by those who stand meekly by,” he told Parliament.
Simms read from a letter by Australian Lawyers for Human Rights president Kerry Weste, who wrote, “Without the right to assemble en masse, disturb and disrupt, to speak up against injustice we would not have the eight-hour working day, and women would not be able to vote.
“Protests encourage the development of an engaged and informed citizenry and strengthen representative democracy by enabling direct participation in public affairs. When we violate the right to peaceful protest we undermine our democracy.”
At the same time as it was thumbing its nose at many of its supporters, the South Australian government left no one in doubt about its support for the expansion of the gas industry.
SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis told the APPEA conference, “We are thankful you are here.
“We are happy to a be recipient of APPEA’s largesse in the form of coming here more often,” Koutsantonis said. “The South Australian government is at your disposal, we are here to help and we are here to offer you a pathway to the future.”
‘Gas grovelling’ not well received This did not impress David Mejia-Canales, senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, whose words were also quoted in Parliament:
“Two days after the Malinauskas government told gas corporations that the state is at their service, the SA government is making good on its word by rushing through laws to limit the right of climate defenders and others to protest. Australia’s democracy is stronger when people protest on issues they care about
“This knee-jerk reaction by the South Australian government will undermine the ability of everyone in SA to exercise their right to peacefully protest, from young people marching for climate action to workers protesting for better conditions. The Legislative Council must reject this Bill.”
During his five-hour speech in the early hours of Wednesday, SA Best Frank Pangano told Parliament that he could not recall when a bill has “seen so much wholesale opposition from sections of the community who are informed, who know what law making is about.
“You have got a wide section of the community saying in unison, ‘you are wrong’ to the Premier, you actually got it wrong. But we are getting a tin ear.”
And it was not just the climate and human rights activists who were “getting the tin ear”: the SA Australian Law Society released a letter expressing “serious concerns with the manner in which the [bill] was rushed through the House of Assembly”.
It wrote, “This is not how good laws are made.
“Good laws undergo a process of consultation, scrutiny, and debate before being put to a vote. The public did not even have a chance to examine the wording of the Bill before it passed the House of Assembly.
“This is particularly worrying in circumstances where the proposed law in question affects a democratic right as fundamental as the right to protest, and drastically increases penalties for those convicted of an offence.”
The Law Society also sent a list of questions to the government which were not answered.
One of the last speeches in the early morning was by SABest MLC Connie Balaros who, wearing a t-shirt that read “Arrest me Pete”, vowed to continue to campaign against the laws and accused Labor MPs of betraying their members, the community and their own history.
No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.
Early this year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez declared, “2023 is a year of reckoning. It must be a year of game-changing climate action.
“We need disruption to end the destruction. No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.”
Climate disasters mount Since he made that statement, climate scientists have reported that Antarctic ice is melting faster than anticipated. This week, there has been record-beating heat in eastern Canada and the United States, Botswana in Africa, and South East China.
Right now, unprecedented out-of-control wildfires are ravaging Canada.
An international force of 1200 firefighters including Australians have joined the Canadian military battling to bring fires under control. Extreme rain and floods displaced millions in Pakistan and thousands in Australia in 2022.
Recently, extreme rain caused rivers to break their banks in Italy, causing landslides and turning streets into rivers. Homelessness drags on for years as affected communities struggle to recover long after the media moves on.
Is it any wonder that some people don’t continue as if it is ‘business as usual’. Protesters in London invaded Shell’s annual conference last week and in Paris, climate activists were tear gassed at Total Energies AGM.
Is it any wonder that some people don’t continue as if it is “business as usual”. Protesters in London invaded Shell’s annual conference last week and in Paris, climate activists were tear gassed at Total Energies AGM.
In The Netherlands last weekend, 1500 protesters who blocked a motorway to call attention to the climate emergency were water-cannoned and arrested.
On Thursday, May 30, Rising Tide protesters pleaded guilty to entering enclosed lands and attempting to block a coal train in Newcastle earlier this year. They received fines of between $450 and $750, most of which will be covered by crowdfunding.
Three of them were Knitting Nannas, a group of older women who stage frequent protests.
This week the Knitting Nannas and others formed a human chain around NAB headquarters in Sydney. They called for NAB to stop funding fossil fuel projects, including the Whitehaven coal mine.
Knitting Nannas, Rising Tide Two Knitting Nannas have mounted a legal challenge in the NSW Supreme Court seeking a declaration that the NSW anti-protest laws are invalid because they violate the implied right to freedom of communication in the Australian constitution.
A similar action is already been considered in South Australia.
In this context, fossil fuel industry get togethers may no longer be seen as a PR and networking opportunity for government and companies.
Australian protesters will not be impressed by Federal and State Labor politicians reassurances that they have a right to protest, providing that they meekly follow established legal procedures that empower police and councils to give or refuse permission for assemblies at prearranged places and times and do not inconvenience anyone else.
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism.Republished from Michael West Media with permission from the author and MWM.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on May 30, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
The hot, pissed off, oil-caked cat is now out of the bag.
We will likely cross 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming beyond preindustrial levels in the next two to four years. This is the temperature at which scientists have warned, for quite some time, serious destabilization may occur. While global temperatures are usually measured as the longer-term trend line rather than a single year’s temperature, 1.5 degrees Celsius is a frightening threshold to cross.
Rather than feeling powerless, frustrated, and terrified at this moment, it’s vitally important we take a beat to remember one very important thing:
it’s not supposed to be like this.
Collectively, we’ve gotten very used to governments, media, and industry across the world rarely, if ever, solving problems. It seems in 2023 they exist primarily to make sure the financial markets remain robust and working people stay on mute.
And much how growing up with a gambling-addict dad makes a family normalize last-second missed free throws meaning no lights or food for a month, we have gotten comfortable with ridiculous levels of corruption and incompetence from our elite institutions.
Word salads, incremental gestures, outright BS, and most of all, pretending there is no problem, flood our day-in-day-out public discourse.
So just a reminder that no, you’re not crazy, there are really obvious things we should and could be doing.
Here are six actual steps that any semifunctioning government would be working on if it were not overrun by billions of dollars in dark and soft money:
1. Declare A Climate Emergency.
Duh.
We’re in a climate emergency, so declare it. And unleash executive powers, in the United States, that allow a government to start problem solving rather than whatever it’s doing right now.
Joe Biden’s failure to declare an emergency and give a landmark climate speech makes Neville Chamberlain look more decisive than the Rock in San Andreas. Shame on him, and shame on a press corps that rarely if ever asks him about it.
2. Climate-Proof Our Infrastructure.
We should cover every structure possible in solar, wind power, battery storage, and reflective paint to protect power grids, reduce carbon emissions, and mitigate extreme heat.
How would we pay for this?
Hmm. If only there was a nearly $800 billion annual budget out there for wars that aren’t happening.
Oh yeah! The Pentagon budget!
Use a chunk of it. Now. We’ve changed plowshares to swords, but now it’s time to change swords into solar arrays and wind farms. Our military has been without a clear mission for years. And the climate emergency is the mission of all missions.
3. Nationalize and Transform Fossil Fuel Companies Into Renewable Energy Companies.
We did it during the 2007 housing market collapse with banks that behaved horribly and collapsed. What the oil companies are doing not only endangers the world economy, it will totally destroy it.
If this sounds drastic, remember that during World War II, there were no factories making Panzer tanks for the Nazis in the United States or the UK, even though I’m sure it would have been good “for the markets.”
4. Invest in Carbon Removal Technology.
We should create a dozen multibillion-dollar research labs to scale up and perfect carbon removal.
We are already at half the carbon load of the Permian extinction, and we’ve done it in a small fraction of the time.
There’s no question we’re going to need to remove carbon from the atmosphere. And there are promising new technologies being developed that are only lacking funding and scale.
Is this the answer?
No. But it may help, and we have to try.
5. Ruggedize the Hell Out Of Everything.
Fires, floods, mega-droughts, tornadoes, food shortages, power outages, and dangerous heat events are shifting into a new gear across the globe.
Let’s get ready with cooling centers, new weather alert systems, sea walls, expanded firefighting capabilities, evacuation plans, etc.
This preparation will save countless lives.
6. Transform How We Cultivate Food and Meat to Reduce Methane Emissions.
The second biggest producer of greenhouse gases behind the burning of oil and gas?
Methane from the hundreds of millions of animals we cultivate for food on an industrial scale.
There are alternatives. Very tasty alternatives.
Transition farmers away from methane-producing animals and toward carbon-free proteins with huge subsidies and support from the government agencies offering engineering and infrastructure emergency support.
“But I like a good steak!”
So do I. But I like not having my house burn down just a hair more.
This is just my list and just a start. If you think it’s terrible, please, please make a better one.
If lots of people start talking about “the plan,” maybe Washington DC will stop looking at poll numbers and collecting checks at cocktail parties and work on one too.
Many will say, “You have to be realistic. Work with the system as it is.”
I would remind them we’ve been doing that for forty years. And the results couldn’t be any worse.
It’s time to challenge the system to do something really radical: actually start solving problems.
The signing of the memorandum of understanding between the University of the South Pacific’s vice-chancellor and president, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, and the Indian government’s National Centre for Coastal Research, Ministry of Earth Sciences, in March for the setting up of a Sustainable Coastal and Ocean Research Institute (SCORI) has raised serious questions about leadership at USP.
Critics have been asking how this project poses significant risk to the credibility of the institution as well as the security of ocean resources and knowledge sovereignty of the region.
The partnership was formally launched last week by India’s High Commissioner to Fiji, Palaniswamy Subramanyan Karthigeyan, but the questions remain.
Regional resource security threat
Article 8 of the MOU regarding the issue of intellectual property and commercialisation
states:
“In case research is carried out solely and separately by the Party or the research results are obtained through sole and separate efforts of either Party, The Party concerned alone will apply for grant of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) and once granted, the IPR will be solely owned by the concerned Party.”
This is a red flag provision which gives the Indian government unlimited access to scientific data, coastal indigenous knowledge and other forms of marine biodiversity within the 200 exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and territorial waters of sovereign countries in the Pacific.
More than that, through the granting of IPR, it will claim ownership of all the data and indigenous knowledge generated. This has potential for biopiracy, especially the theft of
local knowledge for commercial purposes by a foreign power.
No doubt this will be a serious breach of the sovereignty of Pacific Island States whose
ocean resources have been subjected to predatory practices by external powers over the
years.
The coastal indigenous knowledge of Pacific communities have been passed down
over generations and the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organisations (WIPO) has developed protocols to protect indigenous knowledge to ensure sustainability and survival
of vulnerable groups.
The MOU not only undermines the spirit of WIPO, it also threatens the knowledge sovereignty of Pacific people and this directly contravenes the UN Convention of Biodiversity which attempts to protect the knowledge of biodiversity of indigenous
communities.
In this regard, it also goes against the protective intent of the UN Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which protects resources of marginalised groups.
This threat is heightened by the fact that the Access Benefit and Sharing protocol under the Nagoya Convention has not been developed in most of the Pacific Island Countries. Fiji has developed a draft but it still needs to be refined and finalised and key government departments are made aware of it.
Traditional knowledge of coastal eco-systems of Pacific people are critical in mitigation and adaptation to the increasing threat of climate change as well as a means of collective survival.
For Indian government scientists (who will run the institute), masquerading as USP
academics, claiming ownership of data generated from these knowledge systems will pose
serious issues of being unethical, culturally insensitive, predatory and outright illegal in
relation to the laws of the sovereign states of the Pacific as well as in terms of international
conventions noted above.
Furthermore, India, which is a growing economic power, would be interested in Pacific
Ocean resources such as seabed mining of rare metals for its electrification projects as well
as reef marine life for medicinal or cosmetic use and deep sea fishing.
The setting up of SCORI will enable the Indian government to facilitate these interests using USP’s regional status as a Trojan horse to carry out its agenda in accessing our sea resources across the vast Pacific Ocean.
India is also part of the QUAD Indo-Pacific strategic alliance which also includes the US, Australia and Japan.
There is a danger that SCORI will, in implicit ways, act as India’s strategic maritime connection in the Pacific thus contributing to the already escalating regional geo-political contestation between China and the “Western” powers.
This is an affront to the Pacific people who have been crying out for a peaceful and harmonious region.
The 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, signed by the leaders of the Pacific, tries to guard against all these. Just a few months after the strategy was signed, USP, a regional
institution, has allowed a foreign power to access the resources of the Blue Pacific Continent without the consent and even knowledge of the Pacific people.
So in short, USP’s VCP, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, has endorsed the potential capture of the sovereign ownership of our oceanic heritage and opening the window for unrestricted exploitation of oceanic data and coastal indigenous knowledge of the Pacific.
This latest saga puts Professor Ahluwalia squarely in the category of security risk to the region and regional governments should quickly do something about it before it is too late, especially when the MOU had already been signed and the plan is now a reality.
Together with Professor Sushil Kumar (Director of Research) and Professor Surendra Prasad (Head of the School of Agriculture, Geography, Ocean and Natural Sciences), both of whom are Indian nationals, he has to be answerable to the leaders and people of the region.
Usurpation of state protocol
The second major issue relates to why the Fiji government was not part of the agreement,
especially because a foreign government is setting up an institute on Fiji’s territory.
This is different from the regular aid from Australia, New Zealand and even China where state donors maintain a “hands-off” approach out of respect for the sovereignty of Fiji as well as the independence of USP as a regional institution.
In this case a foreign power is actually setting up an entity in Fiji’s national realm in a regional institution.
As a matter of protocol, was the Fiji government aware of the MOU? Why was there no
relevant provision relating to the participation of the Fiji government in the process?
This is a serious breach of political protocol which Professor Ahluwalia has to be accountable for.
Transparency and consultation
For such a major undertaking which deals with Pacific Ocean resources, coastal people’s
livelihood and coastal environment and their potential exploitation, there should have been
a more transparent, honest and extensive consultation involving governments, regional
organisations, civil society and communities who are going to be directly affected.
This was never done and as a result the project lacks credibility and legitimacy. The MOU itself provided nothing on participation of and benefits to the regional governments, regional organisations and communities.
In addition, the MOU was signed on the basis of a concept note rather than a detailed plan
of SCORI. At that point no one really knew what the detailed aims, rationale, structure,
functions, outputs and operational details of the institute was going to be.
There is a lot of secrecy and manoeuvrings by Professor Ahluwalia and academics from mainland India who are part of a patronage system which excludes regional Pacific and Indo-Fijian scholars.
Undermining of regional expertise
Regional experts on ocean, sustainability and climate at USP were never consulted, although some may have heard of rumours swirling around the coconut wireless. Worse still, USP’s leading ocean expert, an award-winning regional scholar of note, was sidelined and had to resign from USP out of frustration.
The MOU is very clear about SCORI being run by “experts” from India, which sounds more like a takeover of an important regional area of research by foreign researchers.
These India-based researchers have no understanding of the Pacific islands, cultures, maritime and coastal environment and work being done in the area of marine studies in the Pacific. The sidelining of regional staff has worsened under the current VCP’s term.
Another critical question is why the Indian government did not provide funding for the
existing Institute of Marine Resources (IMR) which has been serving the region well for
many years. Not only will SCORI duplicate the work of IMR, it will also overshadow its operation and undermine regional expertise and the interests of regional countries.
Wake up to resources capture
The people of the Pacific must wake up to this attempt at resources capture by a big foreign power under the guise of academic research.
Our ocean and intellectual resources have been unscrupulously extracted, exploited and stolen by corporations and big powers in the past. SCORI is just another attempt to continue this predatory and neo-colonial practice.
The lack of consultation and near secrecy in which this was carried out speaks volume about a conspiratorial intent which is being cunningly concealed from us.
SCORI poses a serious threat to our resource sovereignty, undermines Fiji’s political protocol, lacks transparency and good governance and undermines regional expertise. This
is a very serious abuse of power with unimaginable consequences to USP and indeed the
resources, people and governments of our beloved Pacific region.
This has never been done by a USP VC and has never been done in the history of the Pacific.
The lack of consultation in this case is reflective of a much deeper problem. It also manifests ethical corruption in the form of lack of transparency, denial of support for regional staff, egoistic paranoia and authoritarian management as USP staff will testify.
This has led to unprecedented toxicity in the work environment, irretrievable breakdown of basic university services and record low morale of staff. All these have rendered the university dysfunctional while progressively imploding at the core.
If we are not careful, our guardianship of “Our Sea of Islands,” a term coined by the
intellectually immortal Professor Epeli Hau’ofa, will continue to be threatened. No doubt Professor Hau’ofa will be wriggling around restlessly in his Wainadoi grave if he hears about this latest saga.
This article has been contributed to Asia Pacific Report by researchers seeking to widen debate about the issues at stake with the new SCORI initiative.
A partnership forged between the Indian government and the University of the South Pacific (USP) will see the establishment of a new Fiji-based centre for climate change, coastal and ocean management in the region.
The Sustainable Coastal and Ocean Research Institute (SCORI) at USP’s Suva campus was launched on May 22 by India’s High Commissioner to Fiji, Palaniswamy Subramanyan Karthigeyan, who described the initiative as a “celebration of the future”.
“This is a meeting of the best minds from both sides in the scientific, technology world and possibly being on the frontline of climate action,” Karthigeyan said.
He added that the institute would have India’s unstinted support and the way forward was going to be more critical.
“Unfortunately, due to the [covid] pandemic, we have lost quite a bit of time in taking this initiative forward and we have the momentum to make sure that this is not lost sight of and we make it a benchmark project not just for the region but the entire world,” he said.
“The onus of responsibility is on all of us to make sure that we do justice to that. The best way to do that is to make it a benchmark project in the shortest possible time, and to make it a sustainable model of excellence.”
Karthigeyan echoed similar sentiments made earlier in the day by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the 3rd India-Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC) Summit in Papua New Guinea.
Focused on Global South problems
Modi focused on the problems faced by the Global South, including the issues of climate change, natural disasters, hunger, poverty, and various health-related challenges among others.
“I am glad to hear that the Sustainable Coastal and Ocean Research Institute has been established at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. This institute connects India’s experiences in sustainable development with the vision of Pacific Island countries,” he told the summit.
“In addition to research and development, it will be valuable in addressing the challenges of climate change. I am pleased that SCORI is dedicated to the well-being, progress, and prosperity of citizens from 14 countries,” Modi added, drawing attention to India’s desire to partner the region in tackling issues that regional countries have placed priority on.
Prime Minister Modi said Pacific Island countries were not Small Island States, but rather, “large ocean countries”. He noted it was this vast ocean that connected India with the Pacific region.
“The Indian philosophy has always viewed the world as one family. Climate change, natural disasters, hunger, poverty, and various health-related challenges were already prevalent.
“Now, new issues are emerging. Barriers are arising in the supply chains of food, fuel, fertiliser, and pharmaceuticals,” Modi said.
India, he said, stood with its Pacific Island friends during challenging times, whether it was vaccines or essential medicines, wheat or sugar.
‘Unwavering’ support for SCORI
USP’s vice-chancellor and president, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, said the “unwavering support” and endorsement of SCORI by PM Modi and the Fiji government underscored the significance of the institute in advancing climate change and oceans management in our region.
USP’s vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia . . . “We embark on a new chapter of cooperation between India, Fiji, and the University of the South Pacific.” Image: Twitter/APR
“With the establishment of SCORI, we embark on a new chapter of cooperation between India, Fiji, and the University of the South Pacific,” he said.
“This institute will serve as a hub for the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and cutting-edge technologies, ensuring that our work in climate change and oceans management remains at the forefront of global research.”
Through the collaboration of esteemed scholars from India and Fiji, Professor Ahluwalia said the university aimed to publish ground-breaking research and set new agendas in the field of coastal and ocean studies.
“This institute will greatly enhance our research activities and capacity building, contributing to the sustainability of the Pacific Ocean and aligning with the Blue Pacific 2050 Strategy launched by our Pacific leaders,” he said.
USP deputy vice-chancellor and vice-president (education) Professor Jito Vanualailai said that SCORI would serve as a hub for research and development to meet the needs of Pacific Island countries.
“SCORI will spearhead research and development initiatives that address pressing issues in the region,” he said.
“Together, we strive to develop policies for sustainable management and protection of marine and coastal ecosystems while effectively tackling coastal hazards and vulnerabilities stemming from global warming, ocean acidification and climate change.”
‘Remarkable individuals’
USP’s director of research, Professor Sushil Kumar, said the project was a reality due to the integral role played by some “remarkable individuals and organisations”.
Professor Kumar thanked the governments of Fiji and India for their support to foster collaboration and partnership under SCORI.
He said apart from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Indian government, several Institutes such as the National Center for Coastal Research are part of the collaborations.
The center will have a dedicated focus on areas of common interests such as coastal vulnerability, coastal erosion and coastal protection, monitoring and mapping of marine biodiversity, ocean observation systems, sea water quality monitoring and capacity building.
SCORI will be funded and maintained by the Indian government for five years until it is handed over to USP.
Joeli Bili is a final-year student journalist at the University of the South Pacific’s Suva campus. He is a senior reporter for Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s training newspaper and online publication. This article is republished through a partnership between Asia Pacific Report and IDN-InDepthNews and Wansolwara.
With tourism back and booming, Fiji is again a number one destination for travellers seeking an island paradise experience.
And while water lapping on the shoreline might make for an Instagram-worthy picture, for the people of Fiji, it presents a threat to their way of life.
This week on ABC’s Foreign Correspondent, special guest reporter Craig Reucassel travels across the islands of Fiji to see how the nation is combating climate change.
With his trademark style, Craig goes off the tourist track and shows what living with climate change actually means for those who don’t have the luxury of arguing about it.
Fiji: The Last Resort Video: ABC Foreign Correspondent
More than 800 villages are now on a government climate risk list — some communities have already been moved to higher ground but others are resisting.
And many are asking: who caused the problem and who should pay to fix it?
Special guest reporter Craig Reucassel files this video report for ABC Foreign Correspondent.
Vanuatu is in celebration mode after winning a significant battle on the world stage over climate change.
In a United Nations resolution spearheaded by Vanuatu, the world’s top court will now advise on countries’ legal obligations to fight climate change.
It also means the International Court of Justice can advise on consequences for those countries which do not comply. The resolution was passed overnight on Wednesday.
Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau was ecstatic. He was in New York for the vote.
He called it a “historic resolution” and the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate co-operation.
“I celebrate today with the people of Vanuatu who are still reeling from the devastation from two back-to-back cyclones this month caused by the fossil fuels and greenhouse emissions that they are not responsible for,” he said.
His country is still picking up the pieces from Cyclone Judy and Cyclone Kevin, which struck within a couple of days of each other earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has been in Vanuatu looking at what support New Zealand can give — and ensuring help gets to those who need it.
She has witnessed first-hand the climate challenge that the people are facing. Mahuta said New Zealand had supported Vanuatu’s drive to get the UN resolution across the line.
NZ’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta . . . “”We have to acknowledge Vanuatu’s leadership.” Video: 1News
“We have to acknowledge Vanuatu’s leadership,” Mahuta told 1News.
“It’s not really the size of the country, but it’s the size of the vision, and Vanuatu’s voice has clearly put front row centre an aspiration to have the ICJ recognise the impacts of climate change on vulnerable countries.”
Accompanying New Zealand’s delegation is a 10-member Pasifika Medical Association PACMAT team. They will be based at the Aotearoa-funded Mindcare Mental Health facility for the next 28 days helping those traumatised by the two cyclones.
New Zealand has announced $12 million to add to a funding pool for the region to help people get back on their feet quicker after the disaster.
In Vanuatu, New Zealand is offering $18.5 million for a clean drinking water project, $4 million for tourism recovery and $3 million for general budget support.
Barbara Dreaver is 1News Pacific correspondent. Republished with permission.
Monday’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has given a “final warning” to avert global catastrophe. Pacific cabinet ministers call on all world leaders to urgently transition to renewables.
COMMENT:By Ralph Regenvanu and Seve Paeniu
The cycle is repeating itself. A tropical cyclone of frightening strength strikes a Pacific island nation, and leaves a horrifying trail of destruction and lost lives and livelihoods in its wake.
Earlier this month in Vanuatu it was two category 4 cyclones within 48 hours of each other.
The people affected wake up having nowhere to go and lack the basic necessities to survive.
International media publishes grim pictures of the damage to our infrastructure and people’s homes, quickly followed by an outpouring of thoughts, prayers and praise for our courage and resilience.
We then set out to rebuild our countries.
The Pacific island countries are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and Vanuatu is the most vulnerable country in the world, according to a recent study. Our countries emit minuscule amounts of greenhouse gases, but bear the brunt of extreme events primarily caused by the carbon emissions of major polluters, and the world’s failure to break its addiction to fossil fuels.
The science is clear: fossil fuels are the main drivers of the climate crisis and need to be phased out rapidly, as the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report once again confirms. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has shown that ending the expansion of all fossil fuel production is an urgent first step towards limiting warming to 1.5C.
Driven by greed
The climate crisis is driven by the greed of an exploitative industry and its enablers. It is unacceptable that countries and companies are still planning to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels that the world can withstand by 2030 if we are to limit warming to 1.5C, a limit Pacific countries fought hard to secure in the Paris agreement.
As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly declared, fossil fuels are a dead end. Governments must pursue a rapid and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels.
Countries cannot continue to justify new fossil fuel projects on the grounds of development, or the energy crisis. It is our reliance on fossil fuels that has left our energy infrastructure vulnerable to conflict and devastating climate impacts, left billions of people without energy access, and left investment in more flexible and resilient clean energy systems lagging behind what is needed.
Transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy is crucial to mitigating the impacts of climate change and ensuring a sustainable future for Pacific island countries and the world.
This requires ambitious collective effort from governments, businesses and individuals around the globe to transition towards renewable energy systems that centre the needs of communities and avoid replicating the harms of fossil fuel systems, while supporting those most affected by the transition.
Transitioning to clean energy and battling climate change is also a human rights and justice issue. This is why our countries will soon be asking the UN General Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the obligations of states under international law to protect the environment and the climate.
We urge all countries to support us in that endeavour.
Last week, Pacific ministers and international partners met in cyclone-stricken Vanuatu to chart our collective way forward. We have affirmed a new commitment to work tirelessly to create a fossil fuel free Pacific, recognising that phasing out fossil fuels is not only in our best interest to avoid the worst of climate catastrophe — it is also an opportunity to promote economic development and innovation that we must seize.
By investing in renewable energy sources, we can build resilient, sustainable economies that benefit our people and the planet; and momentum for this shift is already building.
Last year at Cop27 in Egypt, more than 80 countries supported the phasing out of all fossil fuels. We must drive this new ambition around the world. Pacific nations will continue to spearhead global efforts to achieve an unqualified, equitable end to the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.
We will raise our collective voices at Cop28 and through leading initiatives such as the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
We know what needs to be done to keep 1.5C alive, and are aware of the small and shrinking window which we have left to achieve it. We are doing our part and urge the rest of the world to do theirs.
Ralph Regenvanu is Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change, Adaptation, Meteorology and Geohazards, Energy, Environment and Disaster Risk Management. Seve Paeniu is the Minister of Finance for Tuvalu. This article was first published by The Guardian and has been republished with the permission of the authors.
There is “is much to win by trying” to take action on climate change — that is a key finding in a major new international climate report the UN chief is calling a “survival guide for humanity”.
It is something of a mic drop moment for the army of scientists who wrote it — the culmination of seven years’ work and three previous lengthy reports.
In a nutshell, it said huge changes were needed to stave off the worst climate predictions but it was not too late.
“This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action & shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.” – #IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee on the release of #IPCC’s Synthesis Report.
Pacific Climate Warriors Te Whanganui-a-Tara coordinator Kalo Afeaki agrees there is no time for despair.
“My family live in Tonga, my father has an export business, my brother works with [him], his family depends on that livelihood,” he said.
“We do not have the luxury of being able to turn our backs on the climate crisis because we are living with it daily.”
The IPCC authors were optimistic significant change can happen fast — pointing to the massive falls in the price of energy from the sun and wind.
New Zealand has seen a big increase in the number of renewable energy projects in the works.
University of Otago senior lecturer Dr Daniel Kingston said the world had the tools it needed to reduce emission.
“We can still do something about this problem, and every small change that we make makes a difference and decreases the likelihood of major, abrupt, irreversible changes in the climate system.”
Those impacts need to be avoided at all costs — there are tipping points after which comes staggering sea level rise, storms and heat waves that could imperil swathes of humanity.
No country too small Aotearoa New Zealand has an important role to play. It is one of the largest emitters per capita in the OECD, and its emissions, combined with the other smaller countries, adds up to about two-thirds of the world’s total.
New Zealand’s gross emission peaked in 2005 and have essentially plateaued, while other countries, including the UK and US, have actually made reductions.
Dr Kingston said Aotearoa finally had comprehensive emissions reduction plans on the books.
“Now’s the time to be doubling-down on our climate change policies, not pressing pause or scaling them back in any way.”
Action would never be cheaper than it was now, and not making enough cuts would be far more expensive in the long run.
Humans at fault Meanwhile, the reports showed human activities had unequivocally caused global surface temperatures to rise: No ifs, no buts.
Massey University emeritus professor of sustainable energy and climate mitigation Ralph Sims said emissions needed to be slashed in the cities and the countryside alike.
Without a doubt farmers needed to cut methane emissions, but people also needed to eat less meat, he said.
Massey University emeritus professor of sustainable energy and climate mitigation Ralph Sims . . . “Design the cities around… public transport.” Image: RNZ News
Professor Sims said cities had a huge role to play.
“Design the cities around… public transport. [Putting] it onto the cities to plan for a more viable future means that local people can get involved locally.”
Afeaki said some Pacific nations would not survive unless the world got real about cutting emissions.
“When people are feeling disheartened they really need to understand the humans on the other side of this crisis,” he said.
“It is easy to be deterred by numbers, by the science, which isn’t always positive, but you have to also remember that this is happening to someone.”
Afeaki said Pacific communities’ experience living with climate change meant they should be given lead roles in coming up with solutions.
The IPCC scientists have now done their part, there likely will not be another report like this until the end of the decade. It is now time for the government, and for everybody, to act.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australian climate emergency protester Deanna “Violet” Coco last week won her appeal ato the delight of supporters. A 15-month jail sentence imposed on her for blocking one lane on the Sydney Harbour Bridge with a truck was quashed. Instead, Coco, 32, was issued with a 12-month conditional release order last Wednesday after district court judge Mark Williams heard she had been initially imprisoned on false information provided by the NSW police. She told reporters she would pursue compensation against the police after spending 13 days in prison. Here investigative journalist Wendy Bacon reports for City Hub on the NSW police withdrawing the false ambulance accusation that led to Coco’s jailing.
ANALYSIS: By Wendy Bacon in Sydney
New South Wales police withdrew a false allegation that four climate change protesters who had stopped traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge last year blocked an ambulance.
Police included this false allegation in a statement of the so-called “facts” that police prepared on the day of the arrests. The false allegation was designed to paint a hostile image of four peaceful protesters and to successfully argue for onerous bail conditions, including severe restrictions on their movements, and tough sentences.
The documents drawn up on the day of the protest stated: “The actions today have not only caused serious disruption to peak-hour traffic, but this imposition to traffic prevented an ambulance responding to an emergency under lights and sirens as it was unable to navigate through the increased heavy traffic as previously mentioned. This imposition to a critical emergency service has the potential to result in fatality.”
An unprecedented tough sentence was given to Violet Coco who had already spent 84 days “imprisoned” at home between her arrest in April 2022 and her appearance before Magistrate Alison Hawkins in December.
Hawkins referred to the blocking of the ambulance in her remarks when she sentenced Coco to 15 months in prison and refused bail. After spending 10 days in prison, Coco was released on bail by District Court judge Timothy Gartelmann.
Her appeal against sentence was heard on March 15 when the matter of the false allegations was raised.
The new information emerged during the sentencing hearing against two of Coco’s co-defendants Alan Glover and Karen Fitz-Gibbon who appeared for sentencing earlier this month.
They pleaded guilty to charges arising from blocking one lane of the Harbour Bridge for 30 minutes in April last year. Magistrate Daniel Reiss sentenced both to 18 months Community Correction Orders with a fine of $3000 each.
Sydney protesters demonstrating against the anti-protest laws and harsh sentences imposed on climate emergency activists. Image: City Hub
Compared to previous sentences for peaceful protesters, these are harsh sentences. Their lawyer told the court that they regretted causing inconvenience.
Outside the court, Glover, a comedian and actor who has been a firefighter for 40 years, told the media, “I’m very unhappy and angry. I think the judgement is wrong and I’m going to appeal.”
Asked whether he thought the tactics were appropriate, he said, “I’m a firefighter and what do I have to do to make sure firefighters have the resources to do the job properly. I want the government to recognise that we are already in the midst of climate change problems…We’ve got people dying from smoke inhalation from bushfires that are bigger than anything we’ve ever seen.”
Asked by a journalist if he still agreed with his lawyer’s statement in court that he recognised the action was “inappropriate”, he said, “I do, I thought it was inappropriate at the time but we have to do something to get the government to act now now.. a few minutes delay is nothing compared to the massive disruption that will occur if we do not get action on climate change.”
Greens spokesperson and NSW Upper House MP Sue Higginson who has appeared for hundreds of environmental protesters wrote on Facebook: “I nearly fell off my chair when the Magistrate handed down his sentence — a conviction, an 18 month community corrections order and a $3000 fine. I have represented hundreds of environmental protesters and this sentence is just so wrong. He should not be punished this way. I hope he appeals.
“On the upside, the case today put to rest the dangerous false shrill claims that an ambulance was obstructed during the protest. It wasn’t! When you have a state government and an opposition in lock step in an anti-protest draconian stance and a legal intolerance to dissent and civil disobedience we fail our democracy, our climate, our environment and our communities.”
Greens Senator David Shoebridge agreed and wrote on Facebook: ”The police went into court and REPEATEDLY lied that this had blocked an ambulance — all to try to get a harsher penalty for a climate protector!
Magistrate Daniel Reiss noted that Glover’s two co-accused “Violet” Deanna Coco and Jay Larbalestier had both been sentenced on the “false ambulance assertion” and that “no emergency vehicles were obstructed”.
This could open the way for Larbastier to appeal on his sentence. Police acknowledged that they had taken no steps to inform him that the evidence used against him was partly false.
If it wasn’t for the publicity, he would not know about the ambulance lie.
The cases of the Harbour Bridge protesters were among the first to take place after the LNP government’s draconian anti-protest laws were passed with NSW Labor’s support in April last year.
CCL condemns disproportionate sentences of climate protesters
The NSW Council for Civil Liberties is one of scores of organisations calling for the repeal of the laws. Its president Josh Pallas described the case as “an outrageous” example of “police misstating the facts which have been consequential in the sentences of others.
“The police have offered no justification for this misstatement of facts. They must be held accountable and at the very least, explain how they got this so wrong.
“Climate protesters are being increasingly and disproportionately subjected to punitive legal action by Australian authorities and this has taken that legal action to a new extreme,” he said.
Pallas described this period as “some of the darkest times our members have seen for protesters,” since CCL started advocating for protest rights in 1963.
“We have fought the slow repression of police and the state in cracking down on protest every step of the way. But the fight is hard when the government is protecting mining and business interests and when the mainstream media side with government and large corporates with vested interests to stifle the right to protest,” he said.
“These cases provide yet another example of why everyone should be concerned about increasing repression of public assemblies and protests in NSW and elsewhere around the country. The right to protest and public assembly is an essential democratic right.
“Stifling protest stifles freedom of expression. Enough is enough, the government and the police must respect the right to protest and be accountable for their actions.”
Magistrate focused on ambulance in Coco case
The non existent ambulance featured in the first sentencing hearing against Coco.
The police referred Magistrate Alison Hawkins to the “fact” that Coco had prevented an ambulance with lights and sirens indicating an emergency. Coco’s barrister did not dispute that the ambulance “may have been” on the bridge but warned the magistrate against drawing implications from that or overblowing its significance.
Magistrate Hawkins disagreed asking why she would be going too far to accept that “impeding an ambulance under lights and sirens might be something that potentially has the potential to cause harm to some other person? Why is that a stretch too far?.”
She accepted the existence of the ambulance and the sirens as relevant “facts”.
She then applied these facts in her sentencing saying, “You have halted an ambulance under lights and siren. What about the person in there? What about that person and their family? What are they to think of you and your cause?”
Because Hawkins accepted the ambulance as fact, she felt free to accept that inside the ambulance was a very real person whose life was in danger. This was part of the basis for her referring to the protest as a “childish” and “dangerous” stunt.
She then justified her harsh and angry stance on the basis that this “dangerous behaviour… deserves “condemnation from not only the courts but the community” because Coco had not only illegally protested but she had done so in a manner to cause a “significant level of distress to the community”.
Because of the seriousness of the situation, Hawkins said she had no other option than to impose a full-time jail sentence.
Protester uses body cam footage to prove innocence
One of the effects of the anti-protest laws is to make it less likely that protesters will plead not guilty. This is because the laws are framed so that, for instance, you are either on a road or off a road. You do not have to be given a direction to move.
If an accused pleads not guilty and is then found guilty, there is a risk that a sentence could be even harsher.
When people plead guilty, there is less likelihood that police version of the facts will be tested in cross-examination. This means that there is more latitude for police to create their own facts — in other words, fabricate evidence.
In another case this week, climate activist Richard Boult was found not guilty of all charges brought by NSW Police for stepping onto a road during a climate protest in Sydney last June.
Boult who is part of the Extinction Rebellion drumming group was charged under NSW road rules with obstructing traffic and causing a traffic hazard arising from his participation in Blockade Australia’s call for stronger climate action.
Green Left reported that after attending the protest, he attended a media conference. When he left the conference, police followed him to his car and laid charges alleging he left the footpath and stepped onto the road.
Boult pleaded not guilty, saying his movement from the footpath was at a point in the road designated as a closing point. Significantly, he used body camera evidence that validated his claims. So it was not just his word against the police version of events.
He also rejected a plea deal, which would have dropped one charge but retained another. The court upheld Boult’s plea of not guilty and dropped the charges.
Wendy Bacon was previously the professor of journalism at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and is supporting the Greens in the NSW election. One of the reasons, she supports the Greens is because they are the only party committed to repealing the protest laws. Wendy Bacon’s investigative journalism blog.
New Zealand’s Green Party has told other parties to come to the table with faster, bolder climate action if they want their support at the election later this year.
The Greens gathered in Auckland for the party’s “State of the Planet” speech.
Co-leader James Shaw — who is also the Climate Change Minister outside cabinet — said the 2023 election would be a climate election.
“I am proud of what we have achieved with the governments we have been given. I am proud that over the last five years we have taken more action on climate change than the past 30 years of governments combined,” he said.
“But it’s not enough. I do not want another generation to have to bear the burden of slow progress.”
Cutting climate pollution
Shaw said the Greens would set out a plan to cut climate pollution over the next few months, and are planning to get Green ministers into cabinet.
“To any political party that wants the Green Party’s support to form a government after the election, let us put it as simply as we can: The Green Party will not accept anything less than the strongest possible climate action.
“The stakes are too high, the consequences of failure too great.”
Co-leader Marama Davidson said many people were struggling to put food on the table and pay the bills.
“We can address climate change and inequality at the same time.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This is the fourth part of a five-part investigation into how UK government climate finance aid is grabbing land, displacing communities, and furthering colonialism in indigenous communities. You can read part one here, part two here, and part three here.
At the villages hosting India’s largest solar park, there is no heating and no eating for residents. A report by Mongabay in 2022 revealed how the arrival of the Pavagada solar park in the southwest Indian state of Karnataka did nothing to prevent the frequent power cuts and energy poverty experienced by the people living in the host villages. The communities do not benefit directly from the power generated by the project itself. Farmers have lost land for growing the crops that feed their families and support their livelihoods.
Climate and development aid is creating conditions for corporate colonialism. It is entrenching poverty for marginalised indigenous and working class communities in the Global South. Meanwhile, it is also making huge profits for multinational corporations. And, these are the very same companies that are exploiting poor, vulnerable, and marginalised communities in the UK.
Wind energy for corporations
If climate and development aid isn’t helping the communities living at the site of these renewable energy projects, who benefits? A wind project in southern Mexico pertinently illustrates the answer. Here, rising energy bills and corporate profit-driven poverty is an experience familiar to the marginalised farming communities who live there. Renewable energy companies and corporate carbon-offsetting are to blame.
Wind farms dominate the landscape of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Turbines surround the towns of multiple Ejido land-based farming communities. Like the solar parks in India, they have led to displacement, loss of land-derived livelihoods, and a litany of other social problems for small towns and villages across the region.
When the wind parks arrived, communities faced rising and unaffordable energy prices and a loss of state subsidies. This is because the presence of the large-scale wind projects designate the area an ‘industrial town’. While residents of La Ventosa and other nearby villages faced the prospect of energy companies cutting off their power, one of the wind farms here, La Mata and La Ventosa wind park, generates cheap wind energy for Walmart. French energy giant EDF, owns and operates the wind farm.
UK international climate aid is prioritising corporate profit over people and creating conditions for neocolonial patterns of land-grabbing.
Corporate colonialism
Leo Saldanha, from the Environment Support Group in India calls these neocolonial patterns of land-grabbing “corporate colonisation”.
Industrialised nations are providing climate and development aid in the form of loans and grants to big corporations. This is enabling these large companies to buy up land for renewable energy projects and carbon offsetting schemes.
Saldanha explained to the Canary how this climate aid apparatus is reinforcing unequal global financial systems. These systems operate in extractive and exploitative ways. They act between rich former colonising nations and the countries they committed these crimes against. Saldanha says that this is how corporate colonialism functions:
Somebody flies in from London or Paris with bags of money, and it’s not that the money is coming free. It is a loan package. So essentially what’s happening is a financialization of a system of control. Which is all pervasive in nuclear, or coal, or oil and gas and so on. And it [renewables] is shifting to this.
Corporate capture of renewables
Globally, there is increasing monopoly of the renewable energy sector. Let’s look at the statistics on worldwide wind and solar capacity from a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. The data showed that 15 of the largest renewable energy companies accounted for over 10% of global generating wind and solar energy capacity, producing over 130,000 megawatts of power by 2020.
Bloomberg called these new energy giants the ‘clean supermajors’. It highlighted that these renewable energy companies are beginning to overtake the oil and gas companies. Enel, Iberdrola, and Orsted are now worth more than some fossil fuel majors.
Gaurav Dwivedi from the Centre for Financial Accountability in India thinks that development aid is enabling the corporate capture of renewables. In a speech he delivered to the ‘World without the World Bank’ campaign week in 2021, he raised the issue of how development aid is being used to push privatisation and commercialisation through public-private-partnerships in India. He highlighted how the large financial institutions and governments are applying this to the renewable energy sector, particularly in solar.
Speaking to the panel, he said:
The operational control and ownership of these projects are with these private companies with technical and financial support from the Bank and its sister organisations for long term project agreement periods. Subsequently, these companies also come to control the land and other resources around these projects.
The climate finance privatisation pipeline
Two solar parks in central India show how climate finance is creating public-private-partnerships in the renewable energy sector. The UK government and the World Bank have part-funded Rewa and Neemuch solar parks in the state of Madhya Pradesh. A Canary investigation found that these solar projects have caused displacement and other social problems for the communities that live at the site of the two parks. Companies have financed both Rewa and Neemuch through public-private-partnerships in the way Dwivedi described.
Global Justice Now have long called out the UK government for using development aid to support these public-private partnerships in infrastructure projects, which have benefitted private companies and failed to tackle poverty as intended.
Dwivedi told the Canary that in India he has noticed a growing monopoly in the sector:
In the existing renewables sector in India, there are a few major private players in renewable energy generation, which is creating a sort of monopolistic scenario.
Using information from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the IRENA, the Canary found that India’s top ten leading developers in wind energy accounted for approximately a third of India’s total wind capacity by the close of 2020. Meanwhile, the top ten leading developers in solar accounted for over 40% of India’s installed solar energy capacity.
Among the top ten solar developers, ACME Solar Holdings now has the country’s second largest solar PV capacity. It won the tender to build and operate 250MW of the Rewa Solar Park.
Moreover, these renewable energy monopolies are lining the pockets of billionaires. Mahindra Renewables, a subsidiary of automotive manufacturer Mahindra & Mahindra, owned the second largest share of privatised solar parks in India between 2014-2017. It too won 250MW at Rewa. Mahindra is owned by Indian billionaire Anand Mahindra. He was the 91st richest person in India in 2022. According to the Forbes rich list he is currently the 1729th richest person in the world.
From renewable market capture to corporate land-grabs
Saldanha pointed to why a monopoly by clean energy giants is problematic, saying:
The money is deciding how much, and the money is not deciding whether the energy produced is useful. Because the contracts which are essentially written, are so developed that the person who was financing does not lose out. These are business contracts. They’re not worried about production of energy and its usefulness to society.
Geocomunes is a collective that produce maps and reports on land conflicts and privatisation of common resources for grassroots community organisations in Mexico and Central America fighting dispossession. It states that as of April 2020, 77% of installed wind energy capacity was owned by just five companies in the Isthmus. Four out of five of these companies appear in the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre’s Renewable Energy Benchmark, which lists 15 of the largest publicly-trading renewable energy companies in the world.
UK international climate aid is therefore financing projects operated by companies with a growing monopoly on the green energy sector. This is happening at both a national and international level. And it is facilitating corporate colonialism and land-grabs which is harming communities. Saldanha says that it is the capitalist political and economic system that is driving this:
While the technology is sound and this technology is a way of avoiding climate change, it is abused by a political and economic system, which is effectively taking control and saying, okay, now we’ve got the technology, but we’re going to go back to the old world of exploiting resources.
Conglomerates of neocolonial connections
Many of these ‘green supermajors’ and renewable monopolies are subsidiaries of large conglomerates. Their hydra-like shares span sectors and sources of capital from across the globe. This of course means where there’s corporate colonialism taking place in one country, you find connections to corporate colonialism and control elsewhere. As Saldanha says:
So the same guys who loot the public and have heated swimming pools in London, are the guys who are now telling us how to fix the climate by setting up these plants.
In other words, those looting the land of marginalised communities in the Global South also loot the working class here in the UK. Moreover, the Tories’ corporate-backed class war intensifies and energy bills continue to soar. Some of the same conglomerates who are capturing the renewables globally are also dominating UK energy markets.
Anti-capitalist research group Corporate Watch released a series of ‘alternative’ profiles on the Big Six energy companies in the UK. It asked, crucially, who is profiting from supplying energy to UK households? The Canary’s Tom Anderson recently reported on its research, revealing how Scottish Power has forcibly installed pre-pay meters. Energy regulator Ofgem criticised Scottish Power for the way it treated those who fall into energy debt. Among them, sick and vulnerable customers.
Iberdrola, the Spanish multinational parent company of Scottish Power, has the fourth largest installed capacity of wind in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Indigenous and farming communities are fighting land-grabbing here for wind projects.
According to a report by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Iberdrola is among the top ten companies with the highest number of allegations of human rights abuses in Central & South America related to renewable energy projects.
In the interests of corporate colonialism, the company hurts working class and marginalised communities both here in the UK and in the Global South. Meanwhile, Corporate Watch reports that directors of Scottish Power and Ignacio Galá, cahri of Scottish Power and CEO of parent Iberdrola, have made millions.
Harming communities everywhere
They’re not the only multinational company harming vulnerable communities in both the UK and the Global South:
RWE:
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s Renewable Energy Benchmark 2021 assesses the 15 largest renewable energy companies and their human rights policies. It scored the German multinational zero points for their efforts to address land rights, the rights of indigenous peoples and affected communities and protection for environmental defenders.
Npower has also received multiple fines from Ofgem for failing to treat customers fairly, and was criticised for not doing enough to prevent vulnerable customers from falling into energy debt.
In 2021, the Canary reported how E.On was forced to pay £650,000 to customers who were left out of pocket over the Christmas period after the supplier charged them too early for their energy bills.
Green-grabbing and greenwash
Land-grabbing and complicity in human rights abuses is business as usual for oil and gas companies too. Shell – of fossil fuel infamy – operates 250MW at the Rewa solar park in Madhya Pradesh. It acquired part of the solar park this year when it bought a 100% stake in Sprng Energy, to add to their greenwash portfolio.
Shell has raked in huge profits from its North Sea oil and gas projects and other UK sites, while receiving a huge tax rebate. Its utility outfit, Shell Energy, which is hot on the heels of the Big Six suppliers, also overcharged customers on prepay meters in August this year. It had to pay over half a million in refunds to the 11,275 people affected. The company also paid some of this refund to regulator Ofgem’s consumer redress fund.
As well as huge subsidies from the public purse, tax rebates and bailouts, corporations are using International Climate Finance and development aid to furnish their greenwash operations abroad. They use public funds for private ends.
Green capitalism working as intended
Saldanha said of the way companies and governments set up renewable projects:
This is the colonial, imperialist way of an industrial extractivist model that created climate change.
You need to ask questions at every stage to ensure that such reckless and bloody exploitation – it ends, because millions suffer.
It’s the same companies, the same capitalist elite, exploiting the working class and marginalised the world over. Renewables are just their latest frontier. Aid is enabling corporate colonialism via renewables in the Global South. Industrialised nations are providing this aid to the same energy companies abusing vulnerable customers in the Global North. By doing this while entrenching the marginalisation of Black and Brown working class communities in both hemispheres, then, it is a feature – not an accident. Naturally, it is the racist capitalist system working exactly as intended.
Professor Farhana Sultana states that the fight against this racial capitalism in the climate justice movement is a collective endeavour:
arrived at through intentional, concerted, and reflexive work. Radical entanglements of places and histories mean alliances among BIPOC resistance in the Global North with those across the Global South become fundamental to liberation.
Building internationalist solidarity between working class and racialised communities everywhere will be crucial to fight the climate crisis. Moreover, these alliances will be needed to ensure that climate solutions are meaningful and just. Colonial climate aid will never serve the needs of marginalised peoples – but mutual aid and solidarity can.
Hundreds of climate strikers heard from First Nations leaders and climate activists before marching to the Woodside office in Perth, reports Alex Bainbridge.
Other demands include greater marine protection, funding a transition to regenerative farming and lowering the voting age to 16.
Earlier this evening in Christchurch, young climate activists breached the doors of the city council offices and staged a sit-in.
One of the organisers for School Strike for Climate Ōtautahi, Aurora Garmer-Ramdolph, said the group had been planning to protest at the council’s office for a while.
‘Strike protests a long time’
“We feel that we’ve been having these strike protests for a long time now.
Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger (centre) speaking with climate protesters at the city council headquarters. Image: Anna Sargent/RNZ News
“Young people, people of all generations have been showing up in the streets to protest for climate action and we’re not seeing the change that we need, so we’ve decided to step it up this time. We decided to come directly into the Christchurch City Council.”
Garmer-Ramdolph said the group’s key demand is that the council retracts its support for the proposed new international airport at Tarras in Central Otago.
Climate Strike protesters in Wellington today. Image: Samuel Rillstone/RNZ News
More than 1000 people of all ages joined the Wellington march, which arrived at Parliament in the afternoon.
Speaking after the march to Parliament, Te Umanako Waa said the horrific weather events of the last few weeks should be a wake-up call for those in authority.
“I feel like the facts are in their face. The students, the people, everyone is telling them what needs to be done.
“If the response for covid can happen this quick surely the response for a worldwide disaster, a natural breakdown, can happen too.
“It’s really important that we hold our leaders to account.”
Time for politicians to take notice
Waa said it was time for politicians to take notice of what their citizens were telling them.
The crowd of protesters, who were mainly young people, stretched half the length of Lambton Quay, with shoppers stopping in doorways to watch them pass, some breaking into spontaneous applause.
In Auckland, the march began at Britomart Station and went to Victoria Park, where a concert continued until 7pm.
Addressing the crowd at the Auckland march, the co-president of Unite Union Xavier Walsh said the government had failed to deliver the radical change needed to tackle the climate crisis.
“Plans by the opposition, such as to reopen deep sea oil drilling, would make the situation even worse — and that is a shame.
“So I say to the Labour and National parties, I can smell the fossil fuels on your breath!”
Walsh said real change will only come from ordinary people standing together and refusing to accept injustice.
Protesters left chalk messages outside Christchurch City Council. Image: RNZ News
Auckland Transport warned of delays
Auckland Transport said more than 1000 people were expected to march in the city. Public transport users could also expect detours, cancellations and delays.
In Wellington, the protesters marched down Lambton Quay before gathering at Parliament.
Student Breeana was among them.
She told RNZ it was important to protest for a better future.
“Most people in the older generation assume we do it … well, I’ve had a lot of people say you’re just doing this to get out of going to classes.
“We have to grow up with this. This is our future that we’re trying to prepare for and our planet. We don’t have another option.”
Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau was also among them.
She used the opportunity to tell the crowd in order to get climate justice, the right politicians needed to be voted into central government.
“Now I know that your Minister for Climate Change is listening. I know he backs the kaupapa. So my message to you, this year, it is election year.
‘Vote for environment parties’
“So if you can vote, make sure you vote for the parties that put the environment at the top of their priorities.”
Students also gathered near Nelson’s church steps as part of the global climate strike calling for change.
Garin College student Nate Wilbourne said they were demanding transparent and meaningful climate action from decision-makers.
He said the evidence of climate change was clear.
Nate Wilbourne said teenagers had many concerns about the environment.
Climate strikers wanted to see real commitment to achieve climate goals from policy and decision makers, Wilbourne said.
They marched to the Nelson City Council buildings this afternoon to present a letter to Mayor Nick Smith calling for free public transport, he said.
Wellington climate strikers today. Image: Samuel Rillstone/RNZ News
‘This is going to be a climate election’ – Greens co-leader Labour will have to commit to stronger climate change policy if it wants the Green Party’s support come election 2023, Greens co-leader James Shaw said.
Shaw made the comments to reporters on Parliament’s forecourt after speaking to climate inaction protesters.
“Frankly, this election is going to be a climate change election and it is clear from the experience that we’ve had over the course of the last month that we’re now living in an age of consequences,” he said.
“I think if any political party wants the Greens’ support they’re going to have to come to the table.”
Shaw said he could not imagine a scenario where he would choose to work with the National Party over Labour.
“If you look at National’s track record in the last 20 years on climate change it’s frankly appalling and while they say that they’re committed to the targets we’ve committed to, they’ve actually voted against every single policy we’ve put in place to meet those targets without proposing alternatives.”
Shaw said he hoped everyone, including politicians from all parties, would support stronger climate policy in the wake of terrible weather events.
Cyclone ‘wake up’ call for politicians
“I really hope that if anything, the experience that people have had of the cyclone and the floods in such close proximity will cause politicians to wake up and start to take it seriously and treat it at the level of emergency that it actually is.”
Speaking from Christchurch on Friday, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the government was making a lot of progress on many of the topics students were striking about.
“Climate change has been at the forefront of the government’s agenda for the past five years and it will continue to be so,” Hipkins told reporters.
“If you look at the emissions reduction plans that we’ve already set out, you can see that we’re making significant progress — of course we’ve still got some heavy lifting to do though, there’s no question about that and the government’s absolutely committed to doing it.”
There was no question we were seeing the effects of climate change here and now, Hipkins said.
Climate strikers in Auckland. Image: Luka Forman/RNZ News
“What’s happened with our flooding, with the cyclone, we’re going to see more of these sorts of events, and that just I think underscores to New Zealand how important it is that we do two things: one is that we do everything we can to reduce climate change, the human-induced effects on the climate,” he said.
“The second is that we also look at how we can be more resilient and how we can make sure that we’re adapting to accept that actually there are going to be more of these sorts of events in the future.
‘It doesn’t happen overnight’
“Many of the things that are going to make the biggest difference to our emissions are going to take some time, so when we think about transitioning to more renewable energy use … that doesn’t happen overnight, it requires some hard work and some ongoing work to make that happen.”
On the voting age, he said people should expect to hear something further on the government’s intentions on that soon.
“The courts made a ruling, Parliament now has to consider that, that’s been referred to a select committee for consideration. How the government ultimately responds to that process is something that we will turn our minds to in due course.”
New Zealanders on average in 2021 produced 6.59 tonnes of carbon dioxide each — about 40 percent above the world average, according to the Our World In Data Global Carbon Project.
Climate Action Tracker, an international project which rates countries’ efforts towards meeting their climate obligations, ranks New Zealand’s efforts overall as “highly insufficient”.
Protesters at the school climate strike in Auckland’s CBD today. mage: Luka Forman/RNZ News
New Zealand’s farming industry also produces a lot of methane, which though it does not remain in the atmosphere as long as CO2, traps a lot more heat.
‘No time for finger-pointing’
But the country’s small population meant it contributed only about 0.09 percent of the world’s total C02 emissions.
Garner-Randolph said it did not matter that Aotearoa only accounted for a tiny fraction of the world’s emissions.
“Now isn’t the time for finger-pointing and saying, ‘Oh other countries are producing far more emissions.’ It’s our responsibility as global citizens, as players on the global stage, to step up and do our part, no matter how big or small it is.
“And we have incredibly high per capita emissions here in Aotearoa, so although we may be small, we are high individual emitters and that needs to change.”
The last school climate strikes took place in September.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Wellington climate strikers today. Image: Samuel Rillstone/RNZ News
Another house done, and onto the next . . . Volunteers working in Mount Roskill community over the past few days helping those suffering from Auckland’s flash flood devastation have done us proud.
Tremendous work by everybody. Here are some random photos of our volunteer teams on the job.
Greenpeace claimed today claimed New Zealand’s extreme rain and flooding crisis in the North Island at the weekend as a “climate disaster”.
“As our friends, family and neighbours across Auckland and the North Island have been battered by unprecedented rain and flooding, it’s a visceral reminder that climate change is upon us right now,” the environmental watchdog said in a statement.
“We need to band together as communities through this disaster, then collectively demand more climate action from our politicians,” said Greenpeace spokesperson Amanda Larsson.
“Climate change is already impacting us, and people are paying the price. It’s not enough for politicians to talk about climate change, they must also act to prevent further climate chaos by cutting climate heating gasses and adapting society to become more climate resilient.
Larsson said the unprecedented rain and flooding that had hit over recent days — a record 249mm fell in 24 hours on Friday causing four deaths — was not only a “terrible sign of things to come” but a visceral reminder that climate change was upon New Zealand right now and a clarion call for more action.
“The science is clear that the vast volume of climate-heating gasses now in our atmosphere due to fossil fuels and industrial agriculture is driving the intensity and frequency of extreme climate events like this,” she said.
“We need to see the authorities name this for what it is — a climate disaster, and then act to mitigate by cutting climate heating gasses and to adapt by designing more climate resilience into our society,” said Larsson.
Climate rescue plan
In his first week on the job, Greenpeace called on Prime Minister Chris Hipkins to adopt a three-point climate rescue plan which included regulating dairy, electrifying transport and keeping oil and gas in the ground.
“We have seen important acknowledgement from Prime Minister Hipkins and the Emergency Management Minister McAnulty that climate change is a driver,” she said.
“Once the immediate risks from the North Island floods have been managed, we need to see meaningful action by this government to actually cut the climate pollution that drives the climate crisis.
She added that while opposition National Party leader Christopher Luxon had acknowledged the catastrophic event by saying ‘Climate change is real,’ this was a “total disconnect” from his party’s plans to reinstate offshore oil and gas drilling.
“These climate floods are a visceral reminder of the need for politicians to take real action to cut climate pollution. Lofty statements and far-off targets are not going to stop the climate crisis.
“We need courageous action to regulate the worst polluters.”
With the growing urgency to address climate change, governments and companies are developing “net-zero” strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions . However, according to the UN’s High Level Expert Group, many of these strategies are not based on credible science and are actually used to greenwash polluters and delay climate action.
However, rather than working to reduce their polluting emissions immediately, governments and companies are choosing to adopt long-term climate action goals and frame them as “net-zero” targets. The concept of “net-zero by 2050” is based on the assumption that there are some acceptable emissions that do not need to be reduced. But will this really be enough to limit global heating and avert the worst climate change impacts?
Instead of focusing solely on a “net-zero” strategy, governments and companies should pursue achieving “real zero” targets by aiming to reduce emissions as close to zero, in all possible sectors. That’s the best path for a clean and healthy future.
Risks of “Net-Zero by 2050”
There is a risk in using 2050 as the sole target date for climate action, as it implies that there is no urgency in needing to reduce emissions, when the opposite is the case. Using net-zero as the main frame for a climate strategy also suggests that greenhouse gas emitters don’t have to prioritize reducing emissions from their operations, but can rather remove emissions through unproven carbon removal technologies, such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCUS), and by using carbon offsets (such as planting trees, which doesn’t always make up for the emissions).
An overreliance on CCUS only serves to preserve the status quo and risks diverting resources from the proven, cost effective solutions, like renewable energy, that are needed in the near-term to dramatically reduce emissions. Another issue in many net-zero plans is the dependence on carbon offsets, which can lack environmental integrity and additionality, while helping emitters escape accountability.
For Canada to be successful in meeting its climate change commitments, the priority needs to be on getting its domestic emissions as close to zero, as fast as possible. Research shows that the most effective way to meet climate goals is to act urgently in the short-term and have a strong plan for long-term action. This decade is decisive – there needs to be strong interim targets (2026 and 2030) to ensure that we have a chance to get a handle on our emissions and create a climate-safe world.
A guide to differentiate between credible climate change strategies and greenwashing attempts:
Does it align with a science-based pathway? – Strategies should stay aligned with a pathway that is consistent with keeping global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius or less. They should also prioritize immediate action with ambitious interim targets (2026 and 2030) that keep them on trajectory to achieving long term goals.
Does it prioritize rapid decarbonisation? – Credible climate action plans must prioritize expansion of clean energy sources (wind, solar, electric vehicles), which are cheaper and more efficient than their fossil fuel counterparts. Renewable technologies are also currently available and are proven to work.
Does it phase out the use of fossil fuels? – Strategies should not be considered legitimate if they propose continued reliance on fossil fuels. This means that any legitimate climate plan should incorporate a phaseout of fossil fuels (i.e. no new funding or expansion of fossil fuel projects) and instead focus on supporting the transition of their operations to 100 per cent renewable energy sources.
Does it avoid speculative technologies? – Technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCUS) are touted by many governments and companies as the solution to climate change. However, in reality, these technologies are expensive, unproven at scale and have very limited success rates, while locking us into a continued dependence on fossil fuels. For climate action strategies to be considered credible, they should prioritize proven methods of emissions reduction in favor of emissions removal through unproven technologies.
Is it comprehensive in the scope of emissions covered? – For climate strategies to be comprehensive, they need to cover direct and indirect emissions released, including emissions released in the use of their products – commonly referred to as scope 3 (or downstream) emissions. A vast majority of emissions released are in the burning of fossil fuels (in vehicles, home heating and cooking along with industrial uses). For climate strategies to be effective, they need to address all the emissions.
Does it rely on actual emissions reductions, instead of offsets? – Climate action strategies can not be considered science-aligned if there is inclusion of offsets. Because the entire world will need to get as close to zero emissions as possible, the use of offsets become irrelevant as there can be no “away”. Additionally, many carbon offsets lack environmental integrity and additionality.
Does it plan for a just transition? – Credible climate change strategies should advance a just transition, meaning that the net-zero strategies are written in partnership with all rights holders (local Indigenous nations and governments) and stakeholders affected by the transition (workers, communities), and potential adverse impacts on these communities are proactively identified, disclosed and addressed.
For net-zero strategies to be considered credible, they must address all of the questions above. Otherwise, they are nothing more than a sad attempt at greenwashing to help polluters escape their responsibilities to reduce emissions. With climate catastrophes increasing in frequency and intensity in communities across the world, we don’t have the luxury of waiting until 2050 to implement strong climate action – we need it now.
Climate change is forcing people around the world to abandon their homes. In the Pacific Islands, rising sea levels are leaving communities facing tough decisions about relocation.
Some are choosing to stay in high-risk areas.
Our research investigated this phenomenon, known as “voluntary immobility”.
The government of Fiji has identified around 800 communities that may have to relocate due to climate change impacts (six have already been moved). One of these is the village on Serua Island, which was the focus of our study.
Coastal erosion and flooding have severely damaged the village over the past two decades. Homes have been submerged, seawater has spoiled food crops and the seawall has been destroyed.
Despite this, almost all of Serua Island’s residents are choosing to stay.
We found their decision is based on “vanua”, an Indigenous Fijian word that refers to the interconnectedness of the natural environment, social bonds, ways of being, spirituality and stewardship of place. Vanua binds local communities to their land.
Residents feel an obligation to stay
Serua Island has historical importance. It is the traditional residence of the paramount chief of Serua province.
A house on Serua Island is submerged by seawater. Image: A Serua Island resident/The Conversation
The island’s residents choose to remain because of their deep-rooted connections, to act as guardians and to meet their customary obligations to sustain a place of profound cultural importance. As one resident explained:
“Our forefathers chose to live and remain on the island just so they could be close to our chief.”
Sau Tabu is the burial site of the paramount chiefs of Serua. Image: Merewalesi Yee/The Conversation
The link to ancestors is a vital part of life on Serua Island. Every family has a foundation stone upon which their ancestors built their house. One resident told us:
“In the past, when a foundation of a home is created, they name it, and that is where our ancestors were buried as well. Their bones, sweat, tears, hard work [are] all buried in the foundation.”
Many believe the disturbance of the foundation stone will bring misfortune to their relatives or to other members of their village.
The ocean that separates Serua Island from Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, is also part of the identity of men and women of Serua. One man said:
“When you have walked to the island, that means you have finally stepped foot on Serua. Visitors to the island may find this a challenging way to get there. However, for us, travelling this body of water daily is the essence of a being Serua Islander.”
The ocean is a source of food and income, and a place of belonging. One woman said:
“The ocean is part of me and sustains me – we gauge when to go and when to return according to the tide.”
The sea crossing that separates Serua Island from Viti Levu is part of the islanders’ identity. Image: Merewalesi Yee/The Conversation
Serua Islanders are concerned that relocating to Viti Levu would disrupt the bond they have with their chief, sacred sites and the ocean. They fear relocation would lead to loss of their identity, cultural practices and place attachment. As one villager said:
“It may be difficult for an outsider to understand this process because it entails much more than simply giving up material possessions.”
If residents had to relocate due to climate change, it would be a last resort. Residents are keenly aware it would mean disrupting — or losing — not just material assets such as foundation stones, but sacred sites, a way of life and Indigenous knowledge.
Voluntary immobility is a global phenomenon As climate tipping points are reached and harms escalate, humans must adapt. Yet even in places where relocation is proposed as a last resort, people may prefer to remain.
Voluntary immobility is not unique to Fiji. Around the world, households and communities are choosing to stay where climate risks are increasing or already high. Reasons include access to livelihoods, place-based connections, social bonds and differing risk perceptions.
As Australia faces climate-related hazards and disasters, such as floods and bushfires, people living in places of risk will need to consider whether to remain or move. This decision raises complex legal, financial and logistical issues. As with residents of Serua Island, it also raises important questions about the value that people ascribe to their connections to place.
Serua Island is one of about 800 communities in Fiji being forced to consider the prospect of relocation.
A decision for communities to make themselves
Relocation and retreat are not a panacea for climate risk in vulnerable locations. In many cases, people prefer to adapt in place and protect at-risk areas.
No climate adaptation policy should be decided without the full and direct participation of the affected local people and communities. Relocation programs should be culturally appropriate and align with local needs, and proceed only with the consent of residents.
In places where residents are unwilling to relocate, it is crucial to acknowledge and, where feasible, support their decision to stay. And people require relevant information on the risks and potential consequences of both staying and relocating.
This can help develop more appropriate adaptation strategies for communities in Fiji and beyond as people move home, but also resist relocation, in a warming world.
As the Canary previously reported, Extinction Rebellion (XR) have announced a temporary halt to public disruption in the UK as they seek broader support, even as other activist groups vow to maintain radical tactics.
A loosely linked network that originated in the UK in 2018, Extinction Rebellion has pushed businesses and the government to take action on the climate crisis with eye-catching – but non-violent – acts of civil disobedience that have led to mass arrests.
In a surprise twist on New Year’s Eve, Extinction Rebellion announced in a post: “We quit”.
It said it was trying a different approach and would:
temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic.
Spokeswoman Marijn van de Geer concurred with an interviewer’s suggestion on a television chat show that the “tactics have alienated the public”.
We’ve listened to the public. They say over and over again, ‘We support what you stand for but we don’t like how you do it’.
Solidarity
Other related groups expressed solidarity but vowed to keep up disruptive tactics.
Just Stop Oil, which has blocked busy roads for hours by climbing onto gantries, responded by saying:
We must move from disobedience into civil resistance.
Insulate Britain, which is pushing the government to fix draughty housing, said its supporters “remain committed to civil resistance”.
Public disruption is vital to demand changes that governments are not willing or are too scared to address.
‘Brick wall’
Oscar Berglund, a lecturer at the University of Bristol who researches climate change activism, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that XR’s shift in tactics appears to be:
a way of trying to engage more people with less risky but still radical activism
He said Extinction Rebellion has long sought to direct protests not against the general public but at specific organisations, such as Rupert Murdoch’s media empire due to its reporting on climate change.
In recent years, XR activists in the UK have glued themselves to corporations’ doors, smashed windows, sprayed graffiti, blocked roads and bridges, and chained themselves to the gates of parliament.
My hunch is that after several years of trying a similar approach… they had seen their tactics hit a brick wall.
He further suggested that by positioning themselves as more moderate than groups such as Just Stop Oil:
it’s very possible they will see increased support, as well as higher mobilisation than (at) recent events.
The government has responded to recent protests by toughening legislation to punish activists. However, Ozden stated that this was unlikely to be the driving factor in Extinction Rebellion’s shift.
There certainly has been increasing government repression towards non-violent protestors but this probably isn’t the main cause for this change in strategy.
Many activists are extremely committed, and willing to bear the legal consequences of their actions.
‘The Big One’
Extinction Rebellion is now seeking a turnout of 100,000 for a protest outside parliament starting on 21 April, called ‘The Big One’.
XR spokesperson Marijn van de Geer told ITV the shift in tactics was because the movement needs more people to demonstrate:
We need more people. We need the people who perhaps aren’t comfortable getting arrested.
You can read more about XR’s plan for ‘The Big One’ and how to get involved here.
