…the war against the earth and its defenders goes on.
Photo: StarMetro Vancouver
Currently one of the most vital front lines is on Wet’suwet’en First Nation land in “British Columbia,” Canada. Wet’suwet’en defenders stand in the way of a zombie pipeline due to transport toxic liquid natural gas over their land to ocean tankers. The land defenders are under siege by Canada’s national government and its police. This whole abominable project is owned and paid for by the people of Canada, and promoted by the authorities – in our name.
The Wet’suwet’en defenders are putting their lives on the line, for the earth and for all of us. Most of us can’t be there with them. But whoever and wherever we are, we still have other capacities, including our voices. Let’s use them well.
DNB, the largest bank in Norway, has just sold its assets in the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Reports are unclear on the extent and nature of these assets (or maybe I just don’t know how to translate financialese). However, by all accounts the assets dumped by the bank are substantial.
Further, DNB is now considering the withdrawal of its loans to the project as well, which would leave a major gap in the project’s financing.
A first crack in the banking wall, DNB’s move is a direct result of steadfast resistance to the invading pipeline by the besieged Standing Rock Sioux and their allies, and escalating public pressure on the banks to divest from it.
The stakes are incalculable: on one side, billions of dollars in profits, on the other side, survival.
Contact information for the CEOs of DAPL and other Bakken pipeline-complicit banks is here. If you bank with one of them, how about letting them know you might not?
We have to stop. Stop gorging on fossil fuels. Fuels made from our ancestors, all the life that came before us. The fossils are running out. So is the ice. So is life, and time.
I’m not saying anything new here. But it can’t be said often enough, or loud enough. We have to make them stop:
subsidizing fossil fuels at our expense and the earth’s
displacing/killing people and other beings (some slowly, some in a flash) to get at fossil fuels
making war after war to control fossil fuels, and to continue fueling the war machine
burning fossil fuels as if there was no tomorrow, and no alternative.
It can’t be said often enough, or loud enough. We have to stop. And start…
Start points are everywhere – personal, local, regional, national, global, online, on the ground. Like this one: Justice and Equity in a 100% Renewable World: a live online conversation. November 10, 2016, 10:00am Pacific/ 1:00pm Eastern. Details here.
Or this: Corporate and government response to the west coast diesel spill off Heiltsuk First Nation (see above, ‘moving crude oil by ship’) has been shamefully slow and lax. The Heiltsuk people are fund-raising online to do research on the extent of damage to their coast and fishing grounds, essential for their survival. Details here.
Or this: Haven’t got around to accosting the big banks that finance the Dakota Access Pipeline? The online grassroots organization SumOfUs has just made it a lot easier. They also include a list of other practical ways to support the resistance to DAPL. Details here.
As early winter chills the Dakota plains, a brutal war continues to escalate against Indigenous people defending land, water and life from the invading Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The pipeline is meant to carry 500,000 barrels of toxic crude oil per day from North Dakota to Illinois. From years of bitter experience, catastrophic spills should be expected.
The project has faced determined resistance for months from the Standing Rock Sioux and members of nearly 100 indigenous peoples from across the U.S. and Canada. They carry on a centuries’ long struggle against colonial invasion and violence throughout the Americas.
By now 100s of defenders have been arrested, clubbed, pepper-sprayed, and maced. Updates here, and here.
Solidarity protests are being held and planned across the US and in Canada. For those of us who care but are unable to participate, action is still possible:
Behind the uniformed bullies with their military and chemical weapons, attack dogs, sound-cannons, assault vehicles and helicopters, lurk corporate oil/gas plunderers (in this case aka “Energy Transfer Partners”), and behind them hired governments, and behind them all, the international banking mafia safe in their glittering towers.
As well as raking in massive subsidies from governments, the pipeline builders also need major financing from banks. According to researchers at the US nonprofit Food & Water Watch, the $3.8 billion DAPL is financed by 17 banks in the US, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Holland, Switzerland and Norway. All of them have the power to determine who gets financing and for what.
Contact information for the CEOs of DAPL-complicit banks is here.
Among them are three Canadian banks. One of them, TD (indicated by *), is directly complicit in the Dakota pipeline, and all three of them provide financial backing to the vast Bakken pipeline network, of which DAPL is one piece.
CEO contact information:
* TD Securities. Chairman, CEO, and President Bob Dorrance.
Corporate Office: P.O. Box 1, TD Bank Tower, 66 Wellington Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5K 1A2.
U.S. Office: 31 West 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019-6101. 212-827-7000.
Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank). CEO and President Brian J. Porter.
Corporate Office: Scotia Plaza, 44 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5H 1H1.
416-866-6161. email@scotiabank.com
U.S. Office: 250 Vesey Street, 23rd and 24th floors, New York, NY 10281. 212-225-5000
Scotia Howard Weil (“Energy Investment Boutique”): Energy Centre, 1100 Poydras Street, Suite 3500, New Orleans, LA 70163. 504-582-2500 and 800-322-3005. howardweil@howardweil.com
Royal Bank of Canada/RBC. CEO David I. McKay.
CEO and Board Communications: Paul French. paul.french@rbc.com. 416-974-3718.
On a grey, chilly day, 25,000 of us (give or take a few) took to the streets of the national capitol. Beautifully diverse in race, origin, faith, age, gender, orientation, and politics, we sent one message to those in power: Climate solutions and climate justice = 100% Possible. 100% renewables by 2050 = 100% possible. Act now or get out of the way.
If you ask me, 2050 is too far away. So easy for slippery politicians to say, “2050? Why not, whatever…” But that’s just me, quibbling.
I suspect there are few illusions among this crowd as to what we face: a towering, apparently seamless wall of greed, governments bought and sold, rampant corruption, fear and inertia. By hook or by crook, the arrogant few inside the castle control the levers of power and will do whatever it takes to hold onto them.
One example: In France the government used the recent attacks in Paris as an excuse to ban all public demonstrations at COP21, the glamourous big stage where ‘world leaders’ aired their platitudes this week, while groveling to their corporate sponsors. Citizens who defied the ban – public protest being one of the few levers we still have – were tear-gassed by police then truckloads of them were arrested. The authorities also house-arrested climate justice activists, and then a lawyer who tried to appeal the protest ban in court.
This tyranny was imposed, and will continue to be imposed, in the name of anti-terrorism. This is the “democracy” that the authorities claim to defend.
But: With the earth’s life support systems under sustained corporate assault and engineered wars, fully backed by virtually every government on the planet, as humanity and our neighbours sink into ever deepening harm and peril, it only takes open eyes to see who are the real terrorists.
Here in comfy Canada, our shiny, smiling new government is doing some good things, beginning to undo at least some of the wreckage perpetrated by the outgoing Northern Republicans (aka Conservatives). At the same time, the newly elected Liberal government openly supports the atmosphere-killing tar sands, the pipelines and trains needed to deliver their toxic brew to ports and ships on both east and west coasts, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a catastrophic corporate-dictated trade agreement, negotiated in secret, that will make it virtually impossible for any signatory government to take effective action against climate collapse.
But despite all this, people everywhere will continue to find creative ways to express their love for the earth and for justice, and their refusal to comply with those who would trample both.
In Ottawa, November 29, 2015, the people’s march for climate justice culminated with the creation of a giant message to Parliament. (Look for me about halfway up the right side of the second zero…)
In our thousands, we spelled it out for them: 100% possible.
Michael Riordon 