Rise Like Water

“As the world warms, and impacts on scarce vital resources increase, we can expect to see a rise in militarism, securitisation, and repression. But there will also be a rise in disobedience, defiance and resistance. In these turbulent times, possibilities will arise and openings will appear.” Art by Shepard Fairey.

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On this day, September 8, we’re holding hundreds of rallies in cities and towns around the world to demand our local leaders commit to building a fossil free world that puts people and justice before profits.

No more stalling, no more delays: it’s time for a fast and fair transition to 100% renewable energy for all.

Real climate leadership rises from below. It means power in the hands of people not corporations. It means economic opportunity for workers and justice and dignity for frontline communities that are the hardest hit by the impacts of the fossil fuel industry and a warming world.

We are at a crossroads. By acting together, we can end the era of fossil fuels and save the climate we all depend on.

Rise For Climate

Art by Jhon Cortés.

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We call upon our friends and allies to stand with us to defend our land and our environment against the expansion of the Tar Sands at the expense of our territories. We stand in solidarity with Indigenous lands, water and environment protectors across Turtle Island, from BC to Quebec, from Burnaby to Lelu Island, from Muskrat Falls to Standing Rock.

We call on all Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies to mobilize with us in support of the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion.

We Are Coast Protectors

Art by Climate Convergence. Photos by Kent Lins.

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“Hope is a belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written. It’s informed, astute open-mindedness about what can happen and what role we may play in it. Hope looks forward, but it draws its energies from the past, from knowing histories, including our victories, and their complexities and imperfections.

Rebecca Solnit, Protest and persist: why giving up hope is not an option

A powerful social movement has risen in this country to oppose Trump and to build a better America. Now there is a guide to give you the essential tools and strategies to grow and maintain a resistance powerful enough to win.

Resistance Guide

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Do Not Slow Down

I’m back. It took me several days to reopen this blog because of how daunting I knew it would feel to reconnect with the climate movement after the last several months. When Trump was elected almost a year ago, the entire world put up our fists like we’re boxers in full crouch trying to fend off a madman. Since then, we’ve been hit hard, again and again.

This summer was unprecedented.

The United States pulled out of the Paris Agreement and revoked the Clean Power Plan as Trump called climate change a hoax.

Meanwhile, hot temperatures broke summer records in western North America and the Lucifer heatwave scorched Mediterranean Europe. Alaska’s melting permafrost continued to accelerate and the Svalbard ‘doomsday’ seed vault flooded after soaring temperatures in the Arctic. Forest fires raged across the Pacific Northwest, Greece and Portugal. British Columbia’s fires released triple the past record of greenhouse gases. Brazil saw more forest fires in September than any month on record. Siberia’s boreal forest burned in the worst fires in 10,000 years.

Hurricane Harvey became the costliest disaster in US history. Hurricane Irma surpassed the theoretical maximum strength for a hurricane and extinguished Barbuda. “Irma is now gone off the scale—it is now a Category 5+ with 175 mph sustained winds,” wrote the Antigua Meteorological Service in a tweet that still brings tears to my eyes. “May the Lord bless our souls.” Maria pounded Puerto Rico into ‘apocalyptic’ conditions and Ophelia slammed western Ireland with the strongest eastern Atlantic hurricane on record. September was the most active month for hurricanes ever recorded.

To top it all off, the bees are fucked. Just off the top of my head.

Good news stories feel few and far between—but they are there. Cities across the USA and countries around the world responded to Trump’s abandoment of Paris with defiance and increased resolve to meet their emissions targets. Activists defeated TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, the British Columbia government joined First Nations and municipalities in the legal battle against Kinder Morgan, Midwestern farmers and activists are still standing against Keystone XL and a group of young people in Minnesota are charging against Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline. More than 40 Catholic institutions made the largest ever faith-based divestment from fossil fuels. Australia announced the world’s largest solar thermal power plant and the world’s first floating wind farm began operating in Scotland.

A group of teenagers and children moved ahead with their court case against the US government, California cities sued 35 fossil fuel companies for negligence, Portuguese schoolchildren started crowdfunding to sue 47 European countries for inaction on climate change. Nearly 1,000 climate change court cases have been filed in 24 countries in an international effort to force governmental action, and people organizing all over the world to block fossil fuel projects.

To quote Al Gore, we’re going to win this.

So this is a post to say I’m back and I’m angry and I’m terrified. We’ve got to stay as loud and as active and as unrelenting as we possibly can—for every single person whose life was lost this summer and for every single summer still to come. This fight will take every single one of us. This fight will define our generation. Everything is at risk.

Do not fall silent. Do not slow down.

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Hiatus

Just a note to say that I’m currently cycling 15,000 km across Canada so won’t be very active on this blog until October. Keep up the fight.

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Donald Trump has pulled out of the Paris Agreement, an action that has beencalled utterly delusional, deeply cynical, and profoundly ignorant. Probably all three. For climate activists who stood against Trump throughout his entire campaign, it’s not surprising, but that doesn’t make it any easier to stomach.

This shit has real consequences.

In this cycle of bad news that just got worse, it means a lot to have a powerful, positive news story to follow. Enter the group of youth that is suing the US federal government. Both industry lobbyists and the Trump administration have appealed the lawsuit extensively. They have been repeatedly denied. They will go to trial.

Odds are they lose.

“The state of the planet is unraveling all around us because of our addiction to fossil fuels,” Xiuhtezcatl Martinez said at the steps of the US Supreme Court this week. “For the last several decades, we have been neglecting the fact that this is the only planet that we have and that the main stakeholders in this issue of climate change are the younger generation. Not only are the youth going to be inheriting every problem that we see in the world today—after our politicians have been long gone—but our voices have been neglected from the conversation.”

“Our politicians are no longer representing our voices.”

So, what's a voiceless kid to do? How about sue President Donald Trump and his administration—and then march to the White House?

The kids suing Donald Trump are marching to the White House

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A timely reminder from MoMA. #BeInconvenient.

Marx Aviano Occupy Earth from Occuprint Portfolio 2012

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Today is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia & Biphobia. 

Today, hold Chechnya in your heart. Hold Uganda in your heart. Hold Pulse in your heart. Think of the communities where it is illegal or deadly to be who you are; think of the activists who put their lives on the line to make it better for one another. Reach out to someone in your hometown who may need a friend. Care for yourself. Reflect on how far we’ve come and how far we have to go.

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One month. The streets. #PeoplesClimate

Join the Peoples Climate Movement this April 29th in Washington, D.C. and across the country to stand up for our communities and climate.

Everything we have struggled to move forward in the United States is in peril. Our loved ones feel under siege, and those in power in Washington are advancing a dark and dangerous vision of America that we know is untrue. To change everything, we need everyone.

People’s Climate Movement

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To change everything, we need everyone. On the streets. Today.

Live on Facebook.

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The political innovations of Mayday would quietly and steadily influence grassroots activism for decades to come, laying the groundwork for a new kind of radicalism: decentralized, multivocal, ideologically diverse, and propelled by direct action.

Seeds, of course, are small, and only sprout and grow after a period of dormancy. A new era of political retrenchment was beginning, and many of those who dreamed of fundamentally reshaping American society and politics were trying to put down new roots, as the first act in a long process of radical reinvention.

L.A. Kauffman, In 1971, the People Didn’t Just March on Washington — They Shut It Down

#Mayday. This is not a drill.

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The rising carbon emissions and the extraction of tar sands will continue no matter how many police-approved marches are held. Play by the rules and we lose. Resistance will come from those willing to breach police barricades. Resistance will mean jail time and direct confrontation. Resistance will mean physically disrupting the corporate machinery. Resistance will mean severing ourselves from the dominant culture to build small, self-sustaining communities. This resistance will be effective only when we refuse to do what we are told, when we turn from a liberal agenda of reform to embrace a radical agenda of revolt.

Chris Hedges, The Last Gasp of Climate Change Liberals

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One month. The streets. #PeoplesClimate

Join the Peoples Climate Movement this April 29th in Washington, D.C. and across the country to stand up for our communities and climate.

Everything we have struggled to move forward in the United States is in peril. Our loved ones feel under siege, and those in power in Washington are advancing a dark and dangerous vision of America that we know is untrue. To change everything, we need everyone.

People’s Climate Movement

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The world’s Finance Ministers are meeting in Germany this week with an opportunity to commit to phasing out deadly fossil fuel subsidies to oil, gas, and coal. Tell G20 leaders to stop wasting $444 billion each year and #StopFundingFossils.

Sign the petition at stopfundingfossils.org/action.

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History doesn’t acknowledge it but women have always been at the forefront of justice-based movements around the world. The Arpillera Movement, Chipko Movement, Gulabi Gang, October March, Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, to name some just off the top of my head. I talked to an activist once who said she doesn’t use the term ‘Mother Earth’ because “hell, look at how we treat women in our society.”

Good to remember we have—and have always had—fierce, powerful, unrelenting women fighting for justice and a better future.

Meant to post this on International Women’s Day but today’s as good as any other.

Photos from Huffington Post.

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“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling—their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Arundhati Roy, War Talk

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Just in case anyone is caught up in mainstream media coverage of Standing Rock, the Oceti Sakowin camp was being cleaned responsibly and the burning of the structures was a respectful akcnowledgement of the sacredness of the camp. The eviction is taking place right now, with legal observers being arrested by police in full riot gear.

This morning, Indigenous Rising spoke with Darren Begay who has been managing the Navajo style structures at Oceti. He told us that as this forced evacuation grew nearer, he consulted with elders from his ancestral lands and they all agreed that based on the behavior of the law enforcement in the past, who during raids have broken and thrown away sacred items and who have shown disregard and horrible disrespect to tipis and sacred dwellings, it is best to burn these scared structures instead of having them desecrated by Morton County and North Dakota law enforcement.

Lighting our dwellings on fire is a sign of respect for them. It's a sign of respect for the purpose they have served over these past few months. They have been containers for prayer and for brining people together. By lighting them on fire we send their smoke up like prayers. By lighting them on fire we ensure these structures go out in dignity.

Indigenous Rising Media

Photos by Stephen Yang and Scott Olson.

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What happens in Standing Rock affects us all. #StandWithStandingRock #NoDAPL

Photo by Ryan Vizziones.