Your riot cops are no match for our RHINO SIEGE ENGINE
I’ve just returned from 5 days of occupying the land of the Royal Bank of Scotland, a piece of direct action that yesterday successfully achieved its objective of shutting down RBS’ headquarters. On Monday when we looked across at the building we could see there was nobody working there apart from cops and security guards.
Context
A quick recap: for the past few days hundreds of activists affiliated with Climate Camp have targetted the Royal Bank of Scotland. Having previously taken direct action against projects like Kingsnorth coal fired power station and the (now cancelled) third runway at Heathrow, they’ve moved on to a target that’s slightly less obvious.
But for people concerned about climate change, RBS is in fact at the heart of the problem. As a financial institution, they are the biggest UK investors in fossil fuels, styling themselves “the oil and gas bank.” In an economy that is now kept firmly in the stranglehold of financial capitalism, banks and other investors must be held responsible for their leadership role in a socio-economic system that is destroying the ecological basis for civilisation.
This system is now in the early stages of falling apart at the seams, due to the interrelated crises of the environment, the economy and social collapse. In the UK, RBS is at the heart of this process.
The current economic crisis was caused by the fact that the dominant financial institutions, like RBS, had used debt and self-delusion to try and keep the economy going. This bubble lasted for a while, until the myths that underpinned it began to unravel. The UK government then gave RBS and other massive banks huge injections of our money. RBS is now 84% owned by the British state. However, they refused to take any control over the banks in return for this money, leaving RBS under the command of its previous owners.
The people that run RBS have one priority: finding ways to invest their money (which you and I gave them) that will generate them more profits and then more money to invest. That’s what they exist to do as an institution. One of the main ways they can do that is to put our money into energy projects. As the world’s supplies of fossil fuels dwindle, the ones that remain will become more profitable to extract, at least for a while.
So RBS has poured our money into projects and companies like the Alberta Tar Sands, ConocoPhilips who are destroying the Amazon rainforest, and E.ON, the energy corporation looking to cover Europe with new coal fired power stations. They do this not because they’re evil, but because they are designed as an institution to do a specific job, and they’re doing that job.
As it is currently structured, it would be impossible to make RBS act otherwise, which is why we should demand that instead of being controlled by private capitalists the wealth of RBS is used collectively and socially to solve problems in the world, instead of being used to create huge problems that will make the world a less habitable place for humanity in the coming decades.
This is all the more appalling when you remember that the working class is about to face one of the greatest austerity blitzkriegs of all time, after the government chose to facilitate RBS and its chums taking the money that should have been spent on public services, jobs and wages for the people who actually keep our society running – public sector workers. In this context, it’s clearly time for radical action against an institution which is poisoning our society.
This weekend, Climate Camp is coming to Edinburgh.
Anything up to 1000 people are expected to descend on the capital for five days of discussions, workshops, training and direct action, in the fifth camp of its kind in the UK. Following past camps which have targeted airport expansion and coal power stations, this year the main target will be the ‘oil and gas bank’, the Royal Bank of Scotland, who handily have their huge, James Bond baddie style centre of operations on a site just outside of Edinburgh. RBS have come in for a huge amount of ire recently due to their direct funding of mineral extraction projects that’re hugely damaging to the environment, like the Alberta Tar Sands in Canada. And these are, of course, being funded with our money, given that RBS is now majority owned by the taxpayer following the billions poured into the banks by the Treasury.
The camp kicks off on Thursday, with a ’swoop’ on the site of the camp from four different locations in the city. The site will then be set up and made ready for the Saturday, when most climate campers are expected to arrive, and when the week’s activities properly begin. Over Saturday and Sunday, there’ll be a wide-ranging discussion on the way forward for the radical environmental movement, and how we can halt the onset of devastating climate change across the globe. Much of the debate will focus on the link between capitalism and climate change, posing such questions as whether we need destroy capitalism to destroy climate change, and whether we should ‘green the banks’ or ’smash the banks’. There’s also going to be workshops on stuff like fuel poverty, last year’s radical climate change conference in Bolivia, and the role of workers in fighting climate change. It’s not all talk though – there’s also going to be lots of legal training and direct action training in preparation for Monday’s mass day of action against the RBS HQ. With the RBS-sponsored Edinburgh Festival in full-swing at the moment too, the camp also promises a ‘greenwashing guerillas mission’, deep into the heart of the festival!
System Change not Climate Change!
The camp operates on a non-hierarchical basis of mass participation and consensus decision making. Based on geographical location, it’ll be divided into different ‘neighbourhoods’, each with its own kitchen and other facilities. The whole camp is free, but obviously does incur pretty big costs for the organisers – for young people going they’re recommending a donation of £10/15 for the camp, and a small donation for each meal you have.
SSY are planning on fully participating in the camp this weekend – and you should come too! We’ve heard a rumour that this might be the last really big, national climate camp in the UK, at least for a few years anyway, and seeing as it’s in Scotland, it’s really too good a chance to miss.
The 2010 Camp for Climate Action handbook, containing a full programme of everything that’s happening over the weekend, plus anything else you need to know, is available here.
The ConDem coalition government has shown its true shade of green with new proposals to reward households who produce more recycling waste. The plans, announced last week by Communities Secretary, Conservative Eric Pickles (whose name just seems to capture his essence), are ostensibly designed to reduce waste going into landfill sites around the country. In reality they illustrate how the government’s commitment to market idealism trumps any supposed commitments to the environment made during the election campaign or before.
Microchips are being fitted to wheelie bins and household waste measured on collection, in a pilot scheme being rolled out to 60, 000 households in the Conservative-controlled borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the southeast of England. The scheme rewards households for producing more recyclable waste, with a loyalty-card like system whereby residents collect points for their recycled rubbish, which are then exchanged for shopping and restaurant vouchers for up to the value of £130. While there are not yet plans to create a national scheme, Pickles’ endorsement could mean other English local authorities follow suit in the near future.
The previous New Labour administration had toyed with the idea of microchips in bins before, tabling both incentive schemes like this one and the contrasting approach of introducing tax-like penalties for households sending too much waste to landfill. The latter idea generated a fearful response from the tabloids, with the Daily Mail warning of “Spy chips hidden in 2.5 million dustbins” and “council snoopers [planning] pay-as-you-throw tax” in March this year.
However both the carrot of the incentive scheme and the stick of the waste tax are misplaced policies that fail to tackle the real causes of the excessive quantities of rubbish our society produces. As philosopher and environmentalist James Garvey argued in the Guardian last week, the point should be to reduce waste overall, not just change the bins people use to dispose of it. The old environmental adage, “reduce, reuse, recycle” was in that order for a good reason. Recycling of recyclable materials should be the last resort, with far greater emphasis on reducing the amount of waste produced in the first place. This is because while recycling is certainly better, and more energy efficient, than sending waste to landfill and creating new products and packaging from scratch using raw inputs (like oil for plastics, trees for paper and card or metal ores for tin cans), it is still an energy-intensive and environmentally destructive process, especially as recycling too has been left to the fate of the market.
John Vidal reported in 2004 that over one third of recycling waste collected in the UK was being sent 8,000 miles around the world for processing in China, without any consideration for the environmental and social consequences – especially as China is quickly becoming one of the most polluted countries in the world, with very little in the way of legal protection for the environment or exploited workers. The Environment Agency admits that the practice of exporting recycling waste has continued to expand, suggesting on their website that, “If you work for a local authority or company that is involved in waste management, an increasing amount of the wastes you collect and process for recycling and re-use will ultimately be exported.” They report that the volume of waste exported doubled from seven million tonnes in 2002 to 14 million tonnes last year.
Sometimes SSY members try to sneak back after their 27th birthday
However even if recycling were rationally planned and performed locally to good environmental standards, it would still be far less efficient than producing less stuff in the first place. The problem with both the bin tax and the incentive scheme is they do little or nothing to reduce the amount of rubbish produced. The Tories’ incentive scheme could even potentially increase the amount of waste generated. As Garvey describes it:
“The point of recycling has to do with understanding the importance of reducing waste in a finite world. It costs energy and resources to make a plastic bottle, fill it with water, package it and ship it to your local shop. We currently get almost all of that energy by burning fossil fuels and doing damage to our climate. The resources which go into the bottle’s production, distribution and disposal might have been used in other, better ways. Once empty, the bottle might take up space in a landfill or end up in the ocean. If you understand the value of reducing waste in a finite world – if you want to avoid a hand in wasting energy, causing climate change, squandering resources, poisoning oceans – you might think twice about buying a bottle of water. If you recycle because you earn reward points for doing so, you might just buy a lot of plastic bottles.”
This also points to the second problem with market-based “solutions” to environmental problems, that of inequality. The pay-as-you-throw tax proposal would have affected all households equally, regardless of income or the availability of opportunities for avoiding excessive packaging and wasteful consumption. Only those with access to gardens or allotments, as well as spare time, are in a position to compost their food wastes, for example. Similarly the incentive scheme encourages wasteful consumerism – especially rewarding those who can afford to consume the most – while celebrating that it might persuade a few more to use the right kinds of bins for the right kind of rubbish.
A complete rethink of priorities is necessary to really challenge the way waste is produced and dealt with, rather than simply attempting to tinker with people’s behaviour to get a few more items in recycling bins and a few less in the ground or floating in the sea. Supermarkets, the food industry and other commercial interests need to be challenged and prevented from covering everything in maddeningly excessive packaging. People should be given the opportunity and be encouraged to consume less stuff and live less wastefully, not just cajoled into using recycling bins, whether by carrot or stick. The logic of free market capitalism has been the cause of excessive waste and environmental destruction. Are we really expected to believe that a market-based response can do anything to reverse that?
As we’ve previouslyreported, the US is currently facing probably its worst environmental disaster of all time, in the shape of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A disaster caused by the corporate greed of BP, determined to drill no matter the consequences, and the incompetence of government regulators compromised by oil company money.
But just how big is the oil slick? Well, over at If it was my home they can use google maps to show you compared to your local familiar terrain. Here’s the spill compared to Scotland. Oh dear.
Two scientists have now resigned from a group charged by the Food Standards Agency with having a “public dialogue” about genetically modified foods.
Last week Dr Helen Wallace, who is part of the think tank Gene Watch UK, resigned from the steering group for the project, and Professor Brian Wynne, who was the group’s Vice Chair, resigned yesterday.
Professor Wynne is an expert on public engagement with science, and said the dialogue programme, which was set up by the previous government, was in fact little more than propaganda for the companies responsible for developing GM food. He added that the Food Standards Agency, which is supposed to act as an independent watchdog that protects the public, had a “dogmatically entrenched” position in favour of GM.
Dr Wallace has similar concerns, arguing:
“It has now become clear to me that the process that the FSA has in mind is nothing more than a PR exercise on behalf of the GM industry. In my view, this would be a significant waste of £500,000 of taxpayers’ money. A process that was barely credible has become a farce.
“Taxpayers’ money should not be wasted on a PR exercise for the GM industry.”
Campaign groups have argued that the whole exercise, which is going to be outsourced to another organisation, will in fact just be used to gather information to allow better marketing and political propaganda efforts as part of an effort to make the public accept GM food.
The last government set up the project to explore the public’s views on the possible wider use of the technology. In the late 1990s GM foods were introduced throughout Britain, including in Scotland, with virtually no public consultation. This led to many massive campaigns, of which the SSP played a key part in several. Now, although GM crops are still grown in the UK, many supermarkets promise not to stock them because of the pressure.
GM protester pulls out crops
Socialists have argued for years that the drive to introduce the technology was coming from massive private companies with an interest in making more money from food, and agricultural products like pesticides and fertilisers. Chemical companies like Monsanto have worked hard to genetically alter organisms so that they will be able to cope with poisons intended for pests being sprayed on them. However, there are concerns that once new genes are introduced into the natural environment they have been shown to spread to other organisms and crops, with unforseen consequences for environmental and human health.
But perhaps most worryingly, these new technologies are not being developed by innocent scientists just interested in advancing knowledge. They are being designed and developed by for-profit corporations, whose sole interest is in making more money. So once a company has altered the genes of an organism, it can claim that this living thing is now their work, and patent it. This means that whenever someone uses that crop or animal in farming, they will have to pay the company for the privilege. In fact, many farmers have been forced to pay who weren’t growing genetically modified crops, after company scientists discovered that what was predicted had happened: their genetic modifications had cross pollinated, and you could find altered genes in non GM crops. Instead of seeing this as a concern, companies like Monsanto see it as a way to make more money, by making these unfortunate farmers pay.
The ultimate consequence of this would be the privatisation of our food supply, so that a few huge corporations would be able to control the seeds and technology necessary for the world to feed itself, and we would have to pay them ransom to survive. One of the most terrifying examples of the way these companies think was the attempt to develop “Terminator” seeds (their name!), which would produce crops that would not themselves go on to produce any seeds. If the companies were ever able to get this product widely used, then farmers would be unable to collect seeds from the previous years’ crops for replanting, meaning they would be completely dependent on seeds bought from the company that owned the patent on Terminator crops.
The resignation of these two scientists follows on from the complete discrediting of the previous government’s relationship with science, after it reclassified cannabis as a Class B drug despite the advice of its own scientists not to, and then rushed through a ban on mephedrone with no concern for real scientific evidence. It remains to be seen whether the ConDems will have a better relationship with the scientific community, but given their support for the mephedrone ban we won’t hold our breath. The Food Standards Agency says it will ask the new government before going ahead with the GM food consultation.
Eating this can not be a good idea
The fact of the matter is, the idea that we need GM crops to end world hunger is a myth peddled by people looking to make money for themselves. The world is more than capable of producing enough food to feed the human race through sustainable, ecological and organic agriculture. The problem isn’t the food we produce so much as the way its distributed. When so much of the land on Earth is dedicated to producing crops and meat for the rich countries, it’s hardly surprising those who live elsewhere go hungry.
A sign put up by people in Louisiana who face the destruction of their environment and livelihoods
As Leftfield previously reported, the US is currently undergoing one of its worst environmental disasters of all time. Last month, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico started an oil spill of gargantuan proportions. For weeks huge quantities of oil have been pouring into a pristine natural environment, devastating the species that live in it as well as the lives of the people living along the Gulf coast. Gulf fishermen are likely to be left without a livelihood.
As the full weight of this catastrophe sinks in, attention is increasingly turning to the role of the Obama administration in supporting BP, the company that operated Deepwater Horizon.
BP is the fourth largest company on Planet Earth. As of 2007 it had $292 billion in revenue. They use some of that money to directly influence the American political process. In 2008, the year of the last Presidential elections, the biggest recipient of BP’s cash was Barack Obama, who got $71,051 for his campaign.
In 2009 BP allocated $16 million for lobbying Congress. They allocated another $3.5 million for the first quarter of 2010.
The year following Obama’s election, the US Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service exempted the Deepwater Horizon from a detailed environmental assessment, concluding that the risk of a massive spill was unlikely. This followed intense lobbying by BP to have their rig exempted from the rules of environmental protection laws. In a letter to the White House, BP said the waiver would “avoid unnecessary paperwork and delays.” Those assessments that did take place claimed, in accordance with BP, that a spill like the one currently going on was impossible.
The massive spill seen from space: note the scale
Considering the billions to be gained in profits, BP must have considered the money they put towards getting Barack Obama elected money well spent.
In their application to drill, BP themselves admitted they weren’t going to put in place any further environmental protection measures than the bare minimum required by regulations.
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver “put BP entirely in control” of the way it conducted its drilling.
“The agency’s oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum’s self-serving drilling plans,” Suckling said.
Freed from the possibility of proper inspection, it turns out that BP then went on to drill deeper than they had been licensed to. And a safety valve to turn off the oil in case of an explosion was not installed, because it was considered too expensive.
Since the disaster, Obama has struggled to look tough on the issue, claiming BP were completely responsible and will be made to pay. But this distracts from his own role, and the role of his government, in allowing this disaster to happen.
Since the US government declared Deepwater Horizon safe, 11 workers have gone missing, presumed dead. Oil gushes from the sea bed at the rate of 4000 barrels a day, and already covers an area larger than Puerto Rico. Efforts to cap the spill with a specially manufactured tower have so far failed, and the tower has had to be pulled out. Hundreds of people have already been made unemployed due to the devastation of fisheries, and as time goes on many more will lose their jobs. The damage to unique ecosystem of the Gulf will likely last centuries.
It seems unbelievable that BP or the Obama administration thought you could drill through 13,000 feet of rock below 5,000 feet of water without significant risk. But that’s the corrosive effect of capitalism: the people running BP, an entity with more power than most countries, cared more about the short term profits to be made than the centuries of damage they could do. The US government is corrupted and controlled by these powerful companies, and can’t be relied on to protect its own people.
Its beyond urgent that the global energy economy is taken out of these hands of these corporations. Putting energy in the hands of people, and meeting our needs on a not for profit basis is one of the most crucial issues facing the human race.
Updates: The Centre for Biological Diversity reports that even after the spill had begun, the Minerals Management Service has been offering waivers on detailed inspections, and continues to be nothing more than a rubber stamp for the drilling industry. So far, nothing has changed in the government’s pro-oil stance, which comes at the expense of living things that live near oil fields, including human beings.
In his latest column, Fidel Castro (the retired leader of the Cuban revolution) mentions the spill:
“Such developments as the recent environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico show how little the governments can do against those in control of capital. These are the ones who, both in the United States and in Europe, through the economy of our globalized planet decide the fate of the peoples.”
One of the worst environmental disasters in US history is currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, and the reactions to it are an indictment of the capitalist oil industry and their bought-and-paid-for politicians.
After an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig, operated by BP, an underwater oil well is currently discharging 790,000 – 4 million litres of oil a day into a precious marine wilderness that is home to a whole range of species that have already been pushed to the brink of extinction by human activity, such as loggerhead turtles. Eleven workers are missing, presumed dead. The spill already covers an area the size of Puerto Rico.
The US government has put the blame for the disaster on the shoulders of BP, who recently announced a 135% increase in profits for the first quarter of 2010. Although BP have accepted responsibility, also involved were the notorious Halliburton of Dick Cheney/privatising Iraq fame, who were responsible for placing a concrete cap on the undersea well. But what all of this ignores is the responsibility of the government itself, after just last month Obama announced permission for further offshore oil drilling in US waters, a decision that was slammed by environmentalists.
The burning, sinking Deepwater Horizon rig
The fact of the matter is that accidents like this are inevitable with offshore oil drilling. Just last year, a similar blowout took place in the Timor sea off Australia, but unlike the current disaster, didn’t receive the same worldwide media coverage. Obama rejected calls from environmentalists to cancel planned lease sales in the mid-Atlantic for more offshore oil drilling in the aftermath of the disaster. His was just the most public face of a massive PR offensive to try and keep the offshore oil drilling programme on schedule.
Obama’s stated motivation is to reduce the dependence of the US on foreign oil, primarily from the Middle East, which is a real strategic consideration for US imperialism. But more simply, politicians in the US need millions of dollars to be able to fight and in election campaigns, and most of that money comes from corporate donors such as the oil industry.
Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, a state whose Gulf coastline will be devastated by the oil, told the Senate on Friday “I don’t believe we should retreat” on offshore drilling. In a complete betrayal of the ordinary people of her state, who are set to face the destruction of their environment and livelihoods, she pushed hard for continued extraction. She has repeatedly tried to downplay the disaster to the media, claiming it will soon be resolved, rather than the truth which is that this will devastate the Gulf of Mexico for years to come.
The reason for her hard work? Between 2000-8, Landrieu received $547,000 from oil companies, making her one of the highest recipients of oil money in the US Congress.
The spill seen from space. See the tiny white dot of a plane in the upper left for a sense of scale.
Mainstream media outlets have also picked up the slack, with articles such as the New York Times’ ‘The spill vs. a need to drill,’ which claimed that a fossil fuel free future is “decades away”. The fact remains however that this propaganda is only required to cover up the obvious: the huge amounts of investment being poured into the offshore drilling programme could be used to transform the US and world energy economy to one dependent on wind, solar and other non-deadly forms of power.
BP itself has also been busy. Although the costs of the clean up have already wiped 6% off their market value, federal law itself limits the non cleanup costs for BP to $75 million. But BP have found an ingenious way to try and get out of their obligations to the communities they have devastated: they are tricking local fishermen out of the right to sue them for the damage to their livelihoods.
It works like this: BP are paying local fishermen to help with the cleanup operation. These fishermen, who very shortly aren’t going to have virtually any fish left to catch in the dead waters, are desperate for cash and sign up. But the contracts contain clauses exempting BP from responsibility, meaning the fishermen are waiving their right to make BP pay for their environmental crimes. BP claim this is just a legal mixup, but the consequences will be the same.
The Gulf of Mexico is a region of incredible ecological diversity and natural beauty. But it is also home to fascinating human cultural diversity, with a people who are the products of waves of settlement over centuries, including the Cajun people descended from French colonists, Native Americans, descendants of African slaves and other European peoples. These human communities have already faced the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, and the failure of capitalism to protect them from natural disaster. Now, they have to face a disaster directly caused by the actions of the capitalist oil industry. For the sake of humans and the ecological homes they inhabit, it’s time for the world to start bringing the oil industry to a conclusion, and taking energy industries out of the hands of profit making corporations in order to transform the energy economy into an ecologically sustainable future.
The attempt by Aberdeen SSP to conduct a serious interview on the issue of free public transport was left in disarray last night after a (no doubt drunken) passerby interrupted SSP candidate for Aberdeen North Ewan Robertson’s attempt to explain the policy. Rather than discuss issues of climate change, reversing rip-off privatised transport with a free, publicly owned service run for people’s needs while reducing congestion and carbon emissions, the interview was cut short as a local Aberdonian vented his anger at Donald Trump. This is probably in response to Trump’s efforts at building an elite golf course in Aberdeenshire which will destroy the beautiful and environmentally rare sand dunes, as well as threatening the local resisdent’s with compulsory purchase orders i.e. evicting them from their homes, if he can get Aberdeenshire Council on side. Then again, we’ll never know…
In response to the utter failure of the world’s governments to tackle the climate crisis in Copenhagen, the left wing government in Bolivia has organised a people’s summit.
Bolivia, Venezuela and other radical developing countries refused to sign the deal that rich countries like Britain and the US tried to force through the Copenhagen summit, exposing it as a scam that would have shifted responsibility on to poorer nations instead of those responsible for climate change. In response, the British government withdrew £2.3 million of climate aid from Bolivia.
The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth is bringing together 15, 000 people from environmental groups, organisations for indigenous people, writers, scientists and activists. It’s taking place in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, where 10 years ago the people won a historic victory against water privatisation that helped pave the way for a left wing government taking power and the moves towards socialism that grassroots organisations in Bolivia are trying to carry out now.
The summit is expected to take proposals to the next UN meeting on climate change in Mexico later this year. These are expected to include a global referendum asking people to vote on solutions to climate change, as well as in an international climate justice court in which major polluters could be prosecuted for their harm to the planet. The conference will demand that rich countries open their borders to allow in the millions of climate refugees created by their own pollution. They also want the UN to draw up an international charter of rights relating to climate change and the environment, such as the right to clean, unpolluted fresh water.
Bolivian President Evo Morales
Bolivian President Evo Morales opened the summit with a chant of “For the planet or for death!”, and went on to say:
“Capitalism is the major element responsible for the destruction of the Earth. Capitalism depends on the greatest profit possible. Yet globalization is manifestly creating poverty. For capitalism, we’re only consumers or workers. There is no other aspect to our identities. Capitalism commodifies everything. We must choose either corporations and death or life. We cannot live in harmony with Earth when a few people are controlling the vast majority of the planet. Our new system of collectivist socialism will solve these problems. We are against unlimited development.
We are united here to celebrate the role of indigenous peoples as stewards of the Earth and as an alternative to unsustainable development. Mother Earth belongs to all of us and cannot be sold. Capitalism is synonomous with the destruction of the planet.”
He went on to criticise dependence on plastic materials, which pollute the environment for thousands of years. He contrasted ponchos made of plastic to traditional indigenous ones made of wool, pouring water over the wool poncho to demonstrate how it was more waterproof. This was evidence, he said, of how we needed to return to indigenous ways in order to save the planet.
Political Prisoner of the US, Leonard Peltier
Some of the most inspiring messages to the conference came from people who couldn’t attend it physically. Leonard Peltier is a Native American political prisoner in the US. He has been imprisoned since 1977 for a murder he did not commit. Peltier was one of a group of civil rights activists who were attacked by the FBI on a reservation in 1975, and in the resulting shootout an activist and two FBI agents were killed. It should be remembered that at this time the FBI was effectively at war with the people of the Pine Ridge reservation, which had a higher murder rate than the city of Detroit, as many activist were killed or disappeared with no investigation. At Peltier’s trial witnesses were coerced and false evidence introduced, leading to his sentence of life imprisonment.
In his message to the conference in Cochabamba conference, Peltier said:
“My name is Leonard Peltier. I am a citizen of the Dakota/Lakota and Anishinabe Nations of North America. Like many of you, I am a tribal person. As Aboriginal peoples, we have always struggled to live in harmony with the Earth. We have maintained our vigilance and bear witness to a blatant disregard for our planet and sustainable life ways. We’ve seen that the pursuit of maximized profits through globalization, privatization, and corporate personhood has become a plague that destroys life. We know that it is not only the land that suffers as a result of these practices. The people most closely associated with the Earth suffer first and most.
The enormous pressures of corporate profits have intruded on our tribal lands, but also on our ancient cultures—even to the extent that many Indigenous cultures have virtually disappeared. Just as our relatives in the animal kingdom are threatened, many more cultures are on the brink of extinction.
In America, we are at ground zero of this war for survival and most often have been left with no mechanism to fight this globalization monster. On those occasions when we are forced into a defensive posture, we are disappeared, tortured, killed, and imprisoned. I myself have served over 34 years in prison for resisting an invasion intent on violating our treaties and stealing our land for the precious resource of uranium. The same desire for uranium has decimated and poisoned the Diné Nation of Arizona and New Mexico. The quest for land for dumping and hiding the toxic waste from various nuclear processes has caused a war to be waged on the Shoshone people of Nevada, as well. These are just a few examples of what “progress” has meant for our peoples. As many can attest, the same struggle is occurring throughout Central and South America. While my defense of my tribal lands made me a political prisoner, I know I’m not at all unique. This struggle has created countless other prisoners of conscience—not to mention prisoners of poor health and loss of life way, as well as victims of guilt and rage.
To live as we were meant to live is our first right. To live free of the fear of forced removal, destroyed homelands, poisoned water, and loss of habitat, food sources, and our overall life way is our righteous demand. We, therefore, continue our struggle to survive in the face of those who deny climate change and refuse to curb corporate powers.
It is time for all our voices to be heard.”
You can read the full text of what he had to say here.
Another person who couldn’t be there was the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. Galeano is a left wing journalist, historian and novelist, who has had to flee Latin America several times for fear of being killed by right wing dictatorships supported by the US. Perhaps his most well known work is ‘The Open Veins of Latin America,’ which tells the story of how Europeans and the US have plundered Latin America and destroyed its environments and peoples since their first arrival over 500 years ago. The book has been hugely influential, being translated into 20 languages. It was banned by the right wing dictatorships that once held power in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Last year, Venezuelan President Huge Chavez gave Barack Obama a copy at a summit to try and help him understand the revolutionary processes underway in Latin America.
Galeano’s message to the summit said:
Eduardo Galeano
“Bolivia is one of the American nations where indigenous cultures have managed to survive, and their voices are now ringing with more force than ever before, despite the scorn and persecution they suffered for a long time.
The entire world, stunned as it is, is wandering about like a blind man in the middle of a crossfire, having to listen to those voices. They teach us that we, tiny beings called humans, are part of nature, relatives to all those who have legs, paws, wings, or roots. The European conquest condemned the indigenous, who lived in that communion with nature, for idolatry, and for believing in that communion they were flogged, their throats were slit, or they were burned alive.
From the times of the European Renaissance, nature has been turned into a commodity or an obstacle to human progress. And, to this day, this divorce between us and her has persisted, so much so that there still are people of good will who are moved by poor nature, so abused, so wounded, but are seeing her only from outside.
Indigenous cultures see her from inside. Seeing her, I see myself. What is done against her is done against me. In her I find myself, my legs are also the road on which they walk.
Let us celebrate, then, this Summit of the Mother Earth. And may the deaf listen: the rights of human beings and the rights of nature are two names of the same dignity.”
You can read the full text of what Galeano had to say here.
Scary volcano face isn't happy about climate change. I wouldn't fuck with him, even if I was Willie Walsh
Now that the flight ban is over, it’s estimated that the grounding of planes over the past few days has prevented around 2.8 million tonnes of carbon emissions by the aviation industry.
To put this in perspective, this is more than the annual emissions of around 50 different developing countries like Rwanda, Malawi or Sierra Leone.
It’s far from enough to prevent catastrophic global warming, but it’s a dent in the continuing self-inflicted poisoning of our home that capitalism is causing for humanity. It also serves to highlight the ridiculous dependence of the UK and other rich countries on planes.
The UK government likes to trumpet its record on the environment, claiming that UK carbon emissions are falling enough for us to more than meet our commitments under the Kyoto protocol.
Unfortunately, the government’s figures are about as fiddled as the ones on unemployment. They don’t take into account the cost of importing all the food we rely on Africa to grow for us, or the goods China manufactures for us. When you take into account the cost of shipping and aviation, UK carbon emissions are still rising, i.e. making the crisis worse. The governments figures also allow them to deduct carbon credits by paying for forests abroad etc., which is in fact a bit of a scam.
So taking this all into account, it’s pretty clear that the Eyjafjallajokull volcano has done more to tackle climate change than the UK government, or the US government, where carbon emissions also continue to rise. Not only are these governments not doing something about the problem, they’re making it worse.
The UK government has fought tooth and nail against local residents in Hillingdon, who are sick of noise and pollution, for a third runway at Heathrow airport. This is despite the fact that in independent report found that the third runway would actually COST the UK economy £5 billion, far from making money. But government policy is absolutely committed to the expansion of the aviation industry, no matter the long term cost.
How most of the stuff we buy gets here
As George Monbiot writes in a great piece for the Guardian, our society is now way over specialised and complex, which leaves it vulnerable to collapse. We depend so much on the developing world meeting our needs for us with cheap (virtually slave) labour, that the smallest disruption can have a ripple effect. Even in the few days flights were banned the UK was facing running out of certain food commodities.
Capitalism takes its decisions purely on what makes money, and doesn’t factor in the long term possibility of problems. Supermarkets rely on “just-in-time” deliveries, and any disruption pulls the whole thing down. What we should take away as a lesson from the volcanic disruption is that we urgently need to start meeting more of our needs closer to home. That means that cities need to start growing their own food, and regions must as much as possible be self sustaining. Of course there’ll always be a need to get some from outside, but right now we couldn’t sustain ourselves without the planes and ships bringing in our food.
Transforming our cities and regions into self sustaining, healthier places to live would be a lot of work. But its exactly the sort of work that would solve so many of our social problems, and give meaning to the lives of people who are unable to find a decent, meaningful job, and are left alienated by an economy that currently considers them useless because they aren’t rich.
Growing food in the heart of the city in socialist Cuba
The other thing we should learn from this crisis is that capitalism has weak links. Some workers have a lot of power that right now they aren’t using. The whole complex system in the developed world relies on the aviation, shipping, and transport industries, and if workers in these areas were organised and prepared to disrupt things, we could put a lot more pressure on capitalist governments than they’ve felt in a while. It’s no accident that British Airways management are so determined to smash the workers in one of the few airlines that has decent union organisation. Something for socialists to think about.
This weekend, Climate Camp is coming to Edinburgh.
Two scientists have now resigned from a group charged by the 
It seems unbelievable that BP or the Obama administration thought you could drill through 13,000 feet of rock below 5,000 feet of water without significant risk. But that’s the corrosive effect of capitalism: the people running BP, an entity with more power than most countries, cared more about the short term profits to be made than the centuries of damage they could do. The US government is corrupted and controlled by these powerful companies, and can’t be relied on to protect its own people.
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