Funk the War

From Students for a Democratic Society:

Fossil Hawks are the war-making corporate climate criminals and the politicians who serve them. They are the mining companies, energy companies, weapons manufacturers, military logistics companies, and mercenaries who profit from resource wars and lobby to sabotage US and UN environmental regulation. They are diversified corporations and lobbies invested in war and environmental exploitation.

* Exxon is expanding natural gas operations using Halliburton's "fracking" process, poisoning North American aquifers while selling jet fuel to US forces bombing Afghanistan until it's "stable" enough for pipelines moving Caspian natural gas.

* Shell simultaneously profits from Iraqi oilfields and from the fuel US tanks burn to protect them while clear-cutting for tar sands in Alberta and lobbying for "Clean Coal" technology in DC.

* Caterpillar sells the same monstrous gas-guzzling D-9 bulldozers to Massey Coal for mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia that US tax dollars buy for Israeli Military demolition of Palestinian homes.

Last month, Fossil Hawks celebrated two great victories: the US-led failure of the Copenhagen climate summit and Obama's escalation of the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thanks to their aggressive lobbying, the world's worst CO2 emitters, companies like Shell and Exxon, are free from new international pollution regulations and stand ready to reap huge profits from Obama's expanding resource wars in the strategic oil and natural gas-rich warzones of the Middle East and Central Asia.

The importance of challenging the violence and treachery of corporate power is becoming increasingly clear to the Climate and Anti-War Movements. If we want to turn the tide of climate chaos and corporate resource imperialism, then 2010 must be a year of unprecedented cooperation between our movements in creative resistance against the Fossil Hawks.

>> What to do, what to do.

We're doing an action in DC later this month that we're calling "Funk the Warming" and we'd like to see other folks around the country taking on the Fossil Hawks by any funky means necessary.

We'd also like to hear your feedback on the idea. So, hit up the wall on our group or email us at funkthewar9@gmail.com

♥ + justice

the rebel funk armada

The Case for (and Against) Grass-fed Ruminants

Dearest Jeffie Poo II,

In response to your comment left many moons ago, I offer a link to this article on the environmental impacts of beef, both pastorally raised and otherwise. The article again sites Diet, Energy & Climate Change (PDF) as a primary source, and points out that grass-fed cows actually burp up more methane than corn-fed cows.

But global warming pollution isn't the only monster under the bed. As Eschel Gidons, co-author of Diet, Energy & Climate Change discusses with Grist: [Cow manure] could [...] reduce eutrophication of waterways caused by excess fertilizer runoff. "...Cows have this uncanny ability to recycle local nutrients. Pooping is one of their biggest talents. And that’s what we need of them, really.”

So cow pies, in small, well-distributed batches, have a role in sustainable food production. But if global green-house-gas emissions needed to peak by 2015 in order to not torch the Amazon or displace millions of people (which they must), in spite of an ever-growing, ever-richer, ever-more energy intensive world population, then we probably need to eat less cow.

Biggest Ever Protest on Global Warming at D.C. Coal Plant

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 3, 2009

Advisory: Biggest Ever Civil Disobedience on Global Warming at Congressional Power Plant
1000+ Already Signed Up to Participate; Dr. James Hansen, Others to Protest Use of Coal

WASHINGTON— A national coalition of more than 40 environmental, public health, labor, social justice, faith-based and other advocacy groups today announce plans to engage in civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington D.C. on the afternoon of March 2, 2009. The Capitol Climate Action (CCA), the largest mass mobilization on global warming in the country’s history, reflects the growing public demand for bold action to address the climate and energy crises.

“The Capitol Climate Action comes not a moment too soon. For more than thirty years, scientists, environmentalists and people from all walks of life have urged our leaders to take action to stop global warming; and that action has yet to come,” said Dr. James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists. Dr. Hansen will join the protest. “Coal is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country and that must change. The world is waiting for the Obama administration and Congress to lead the way forward on this defining issue of our time. They need to start by getting coal out of Congress.”

The Capitol Power Plant, which is owned by Congress and sits just blocks from the American seat of power, burns coal to heat and cool numerous buildings on Capitol Hill. The facility no longer generates electricity but its reliance on coal – the country’s biggest source of global warming pollution and a documented health hazard – has made it the focus of political controversy and a powerful symbol of coal’s impact on the environment and public health.

“This demonstration marks the beginning of a sustained effort to draw a line in the sand against this dirty and dangerous fuel,” said Matt Leonard of Greenpeace, which is helping to organize the protest. “Our leaders cannot promise us a healthy and prosperous future as long as coal is polluting our soil, water and atmosphere.”

"We can no longer wait for the changes we know we can, and must, make today,” continued Rebecca Tarbotton of Rainforest Action Network (RAN), a lead sponsor of the action. “We’ve got to take the slogan ‘yes we can’ seriously. With a new administration and a new Congress, we have a window of opportunity to build a clean energy economy that will protect the health of our families, our climate and our future.”

The diversity of groups involved in the action reflects the number of people affected by global warming. Of all the fossil fuels, coal is the single biggest contributor to global warming. Burning coal cuts short at least 24,000 lives in the U.S. annually, inflicts catastrophic damage to the landscape and water supplies, and jeopardizes the lives of coal miners. Furthermore, the December coal ash spill in Tennessee makes it clear that there is no adequate means of safely storing coal combustion waste.

“As the impacts of global warming accelerate, thousands of people from all walks of life will join together in early March,” said Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN). “We will be participating in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful resistance, this time in the name of stopping the great moral wrong of climate change.”

In response to public pressure, the House of Representatives converted half of the plant’s fuel to cleaner natural gas. But attempts to remove coal from the fuel mix entirely have been blocked by powerful coal-state Senators Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

A recent University of Massachusetts study found investing in clean energy projects like wind power and mass transit creates three to four times more jobs than the same expenditure on the coal industry. The wind power sector has grown to employ more Americans than coal mining as demand for clean energy has jumped over the past decade.

For a list of sponsors and more information about the Capitol Climate Action, visit www.capitolclimateaction.org

###

CONTACTS: Mike Crocker, Greenpeace USA Media Officer, 202-319-2471; Nell Greenberg, Communications Manager, Rainforest Action Network, 510-847-9777; Anne Havemann, Communications Director, CCAN, 240-396-2022

References:

“Reliance on Coal Sullies ‘Green the Capitol’ Effort.” Washington Post. April 21, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042002128.html

“Dirty Air Dirty: Mortality and Health Damage Due to Pollution from Power Plants.” A Clean Air Task Force Report
http://www.catf.us/publications/reports/Dirty_Air_Dirty_Power.pdf

“Wind Jobs Outstrip the Coal Industry.” CNNMoney.com.
http://greenwombat.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/01/28/wind-jobs-outstrip-the-coal-industry/

The Great Thing About Global Warming

What’s the difference between a drowned American, a drowned Chinese person and a drowned Indian? Absolutely nothing.

This is how I feel about America’s refusal to engage on binding carbon-emission-reduction treaties like Kyoto. As America frets about losing her place as the economic prom queen, she’s ignoring the fact that the vast majority of her citizens, if held under water for an extended period of time, will die. New York is just waiting to fall off its rock. Los Angeles has been itching to go aquatic since God invented earthquakes. (Not that anybody will miss it much. Plus, everyone will have already left for want of drinking water). But this is why global warming is so brilliant. It doesn’t matter where the pollution is coming from. We’re all screwed. Everybody loses.

Always before pollution has been a localized problem. Indeed, the technical definition of pollution is an excessive concentration of any substance within a given volume. Normally, that “volume” is something fairly specific like the water downstream from a paper mill or the air under an overpass. People with choice move upstream or into the suburbs, and since it is the people with choice that make money from the pollution generators and write the laws that govern them, change happens slowly. Only when the people with choice can not reasonably escape is serious action taken.

The EPA’s immensely successful Acid Rain Program is an excellent example of this. East coast cities in the US were suffering because of NO_x and SO_x that were blowing their way from Midwestern and Appalachian cars and coal fired power plants. A regulatory scheme was concocted that sets a cap for acid-rain-causing emissions and requires industry to acquire pollution credits, which they can then trade. SO₂ levels will have dropped almost by half since 1980 and the program was significantly less expensive to operate than originally projected. Excellent indeed, but I doubt the EPA would jump so fast if the Midwest started catching the pollution of wealthy East Coasters.

What I glean from all this is that cap-and-trade trade treaties (like Kyoto) can be used to great effect if the rich parties involved think they have something to gain from signing on. Apparently, America still thinks that she will fare fine in the face of climate change, or at least fare better than other countries with fewer resources. But keeping up with the Joneses becomes a morbid game when the contest is over who will have fewer hundreds-of-thousands of deaths and climate refugees.

With the biggest historical carbon footprint by far, the most luxury emissions and the richest population in the world, America has the most room for improvement and the most power to change. In order to avoid the worst disasters associated with a rapidly warming planet, we need to make big changes and big sacrifices immediately. So I implore you America: keep stalling if you want. Keep bemoaning the inaction of India and China, whose per capita emissions are small fractions of ours. Carry on as you were; you will only be hurting everybody.

veganism and environmental justice

Lets all think back to Mr. Keener's AP biology class. Any given ecosystem can support significantly more herbavores than carnivores. That's because 90% of the energy is lost at each tropic level. The majority of the food that an animal eats is used to keep it warm and kicking. Only 10% goes to making flesh. Meaning if you were to eat the grain, rather than eating the cow fed by the grain, you would only need to grow 1/10th of the grain, which would require 1/10th the amount of land. Furthermore, the processing of animal products is extremely energy intensive, requiring refrigeration, rapid transportation, and a shit ton of water to clean slaughter houses.

Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that's more than the emissions caused by transportation.
csmonitor

That statistic is a little misleading, because many more people eat meat in the world than drive cars (so you're not off the hook for driving everywhere). In terms of cutting down on your GHGs researches concluded that dietary changes could make more difference than trading in a standard sedan for a more efficient hybrid car, which reduces annual CO2 emissions by roughly one ton a year.
(from Diet, Energy & Climate Change by Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin)

So when the U.N. added it all up, what they found is that eating chickens, pigs, and other animals contributes to "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity," and that meat-eating is "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.

And on the issue of global warming, the issue the New York Times deems critical enough to demand that we "change [our] lifestyles" and for which Al Gore and the IPCC received the Nobel peace prize, the United Nations' scientists conclude that eating animals causes 40 percent more global warming than all planes, cars, trucks, and other forms of transport combined, which is why the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook says that "refusing meat" is "the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint" [emphasis in original].

There is a lot of important attention paid to population, and that's a critical issue too, but if we're consuming 11 times as much as people in China and 32 times as much as people in the third world, then it's not just about population; it's also about consumption.
www.alternet.org

From a human rights perspective, it is important to keep in mind that forest loss and land reposition contribute to sometimes violent removal of indigenous populations from their land. Cattle grazing and soy production (something like 80% of which is used to feed livestock) are two of the biggest factors contributing to deforestation in the Amazon. It is also worth pointing out that something like 60% of soy production in the Amazon is funded by three American agrigiants (Cargill, ADM, and I forget the third).

Here's an article about indigenous murders & suicides linked to land shortage and agriculture in Brazil. The main crop they're planting is sugarcane to make Ethanol (Brazil gets most of their fuel from ethanol) but the secondary crop is soy.
ipsnews.net

Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth's entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 per cent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 per cent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 per cent of pastures considered degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution from animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops.
www.un.org