Climate Change Justice and Resistance from Doha to East Texas

Show #40 on Climate Change Resistance with Anne Petermann, Ramsey Sprague and Diane Wilson by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Anne Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project discusses the recent climate conference in Doha, Qatar which is characterized more as a trade show for corporations looking to profit from climate change than a conference about solutions, and the increasing exclusion of non-corporate voices. She says solutions to the climate crisis are coming from the bottom up. Ramsey Sprague of the Tar Sands Blockade describes the growing resistance to the Keystone XL Pipeline and the upcoming direct action training camp and action Jan. 3 to 8. Co-hosts Margaret and Kevin will participate in that action and urge you to support it or participate as well. And ecology activist Diane Wilson who is on her 19th day of a hunger strike describes why she is risking her life to hold Valero Oil accountable to her community.

Guests

Anne Petermann is the Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project. She is also the Coordinator of the STOP GE Trees Campaign; the North American Focal Point for the Global Forest Coalition; and a member of the Board of Directors of the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture Series.

She has been involved in movements for forest protection and Indigenous rights since 1991; and the international and national climate justice movements since 2004. She co-founded the Eastern North American Resource Center of the Native Forest Network in 1993, and the STOP GE Trees Campaign in 2004. She also participated in the founding of the Durban Group for Climate Justice in 2004, and Climate Justice Now! in 2007 at the Bali UN Climate Conference. In 2008, Global Justice Ecology Project spearheaded the founding of the North American Mobilization for Climate Justice.

She is the author of several reports detailing the dangers of genetically engineered trees, and second generation cellulosic biofuels agrofuels, including their impacts on forests and forest dependent peoples. She is also a frequent contributor to Z Magazine. She was banned from the Doha international climate meeting in 2012 because of her participation in “un-permitted” protests at previous meetings.

Letter telling Petermann she is not welcome at the Doha climate talks:

Ramsey Sprague is an activist and spokesperson with the Tar Sands Blockade. The Blockade is a coalition of Texas and Oklahoma landowners and climate justice organizers using peaceful and sustained civil disobedience to stop the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. They intend to force the termination of this dangerous pipeline to create a more clean and livable world that works for everyone.

From January 3rd to 8th the Tar Sands Blockade will be holding a mass action and training. Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, co-hosts of Clearing the FOG will be participating in this action. They seeks to create a massive and overwhelming disruption of TransCanada’s ability to steal our land, poison our water, and destabilize our climate.

Diane Wilson is a fourth-generation shrimper, who began fishing the bays off the Gulf Coast of Texas at the age of eight. By 24 she was a boat captain. In 1989, while running her brother’s fish house at the docks and mending nets, she read a newspaper article that listed her home of Calhoun County as the number one toxic polluter in the country. She set up a meeting in the town hall to discuss what the chemical plants were doing to the bays and thus began her life as an environmental activist. Threatened by thugs and despised by her neighbors, Diane insisted the truth be told and that Formosa Plastics stop dumping toxins into the bay.

Her work on behalf of the people and aquatic life of Seadrift, Texas, has won her a number of awards including: National Fisherman Magazine Award, Mother Jones’s Hell Raiser of the Month, Louis Gibbs’ Environmental Lifetime Award, Louisiana Environmental Action (LEAN) Environmental Award, Giraffe Project, Jenifer Altman Award, and the Bioneers Award. She is co-founder of Code Pink and continues to lead the fight for social justice.

Diane is the author of “An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, And the Fight for Seadrift, Texas.”

Diane Wilson and Bob Lindsey are undertaking a sustained hunger strike which began on November, 29th when they locked their necks to tanker trucks attempting to enter the Valero refinery in Manchester. They refuse to eat until the following demands are met:
1. Valero completely divest from Keystone XL and all forms of tar sands exploitation
2. Valero invest in the health and well being of the Manchester community
3. Valero refinery shut down and vacate the Manchester community