Sunday, April 30, 2017

What’s Killing Life On The Planet


Aside from being focused on the Western mind, and the Western way of doing things, this week’s newsletter examines militarization, and pipelines, linking them to climate collapse, and the over-all need to de-carbonize the economy. Both issues point to a PEACE IN ACTION MOVEMENT. If that sounds like the blind men palpating the elephant, by the last sentence, elephant anatomy should become clear.

Today the Bay Area joined many other U.S. cities celebrating April 29 in the biggest ever turnout for re-claiming the climate the Bay Area has ever seen. In the process of handing out nearly 300 flyers—two even went to Barbara Lee, our stand-alone voice for restraint in the US congressional cowboy cabal—I stumbled on any number of people I knew. Stumbled because most of the time the crowd was so dense, I couldn’t even see where I was going, let alone where they were coming from.

(For additional facts and links and how you can reprint both two-sided flyers—they’re open source—see below).

And before any of that happened, I formed part of a ragged little band of uppity Code Pinkers shutting down a Wells Fargo Bank, one of some 20 banks capitalizing Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation backing the Dakota Access Pipeline. “You won’t mind if we just run this pipeline through your bank,” we shouted as we unspooled a 20-foot long collapsible black pipe displaying the message #DIVEST FROM SUPPORTING THE DAPL.



Trump’s technocrats to the contrary, the culture seems finally to have made the connection that human activity is causing global warming and eventual climate collapse. In the history of human affairs this ideational breakthrough parallels that other great aha! moment, when some less-than-dim-wit discovered that certain human activity refreshes the supply of tiny humans.

Fact: In its efforts to “secure” (Ambrose Bierce: secure-steal) the oil under their sands, the Pentagon burns 340,000 barrels of oil a day, 80% of Federal energy demand, creating a spiraling vicious circle: the more oil under their sands, the more oil gets burned getting it. 

We need to think about the connection between warmaking and climate collapse.. As the planet heats up, there will be massive displacement, resulting in massive civil unrest. Power of the people to push back requires a nation-wide PEACE IN ACTION MOVEMENT.

Military Fossilization’s evil twin: Civilian Pipelines

Fact: Pipelines and their construction is the CIVILIAN TWIN OF THE PENTAGON. At the height of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest, the National Sheriff’s Association lobbied for more military gear and (under the auspices of FEMA “Garden Plot” and “Cable Splicer”) law enforcement officials began pouring into North Dakota.

The PennEast Pipeline would lead to annual emission of 49 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent like adding 14 coal plants or 10 million passenger vehicles; the Atlantic Coast pipeline would harm agricultural producers, and lead to annual emissions of over 69 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, like adding 20 coal plants or 14 million passenger vehicles; the Mountain Valley Pipeline would lead to annual emissions of over 89 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, like adding 26 coal plants or 19 million passenger cars, and in the Appalachian Basin, there are 19 key new proposed natural gas pipelines. Not to mention inevitable “spills.” Just this week, Energy Transfer Partners Rover Pipeline Project spilled 2 million gallons of drilling fluid into the Ohio wetlands. I all, FERC approved 38 new pipelines in 2016.
 


VIDEO: Outdoor theater spices up 2012 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill protest

The movement to de-carbonize the climate needs to find itself under the
PEACE IN ACTION MOVEMENT, pushing back against the two evil twins: Pentagon and Pipelines (This newsletter’s Cowboys & Indians, Part I addresses how corporations appropriating ancestral native American lands to lay pipelines opened up yet another chapter of the American Indian Wars. Part II describes how FEMA used the reservation to develop population control procedures).

The time to organize a massive PEACE IN ACTION MOVEMENT is NOW.

WHAT YOU CAN DO.



Move your money to a credit union, or other institution not capitalizing the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Write your retirement fund urging it to divest from supporting pipeline infrastructure, complicit banks, and warmaking industries.

Join (or start) a people’s budget initiative in your community.

*Use outdoor theater strategy to bring your point home

Reproduce and circulate the two-sided flyers copied below:

DIVEST FROM BANKS FUNDING THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE

Please consider withdrawing your money if you bank at any of these institutions:

Citibank (CitiGroup)             Bank of America                    Tangerine Bank
Wells Fargo                            JP Moran Chase                     Royal Bank of Scotland
Barclays                                  Sumitomo Mitsui Bank         BBVA Securities
Deutsche Bank                      Societe General                      Bank of Nova Scotia
Morgan Stanley                     Credit Suisse                          Royal Bank of Canada          
Bank of Tokyo                        Intesa SanPaolo                     Citizen’s Bank           
Goldman Sachs                      UBS HSBC Bank                     Comerica Bank
TD Securities                         Natixis                                                U.S. Bank
Credit Agricole                       BayernLB                               PNC Bank
Bank of the West                   ICBA London                          SMBC Nikko Securities
DNB Capital/ASA                   ABN Amro Capital                 DNB Capital
Mizuho Bank                          Sun Trust                               Origin Bank
                                                                                               
and writing to their headquarters (see http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/how-to-contact-the-17-banks-funding-the-dakota-access-pipeline-20160929  for names & addresses) explaining why; and please re-deposit your money at your local credit union.
For other redeposit suggestions:  http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/is-your-bank-funding-dapl-heres-how-to-find-one-that-isnt-20161201

URGE RETIREMENT FUNDS TO DIVEST FROM FUNDING THE DAPL

If you contribute to or benefit as a retiree from a pension fund please consider urging your fund managers to divest from any entities capitalizing the DAPL.

Here is a sample letter:

It has come to my attention that ________ fund benefits from the Dakota Access Pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, and other entities capitalizing pipelines:
I cannot in right conscience benefit from retirement funds so-derived because:
1. Fossil fuels are contributing to climate collapse.
2. The probability is that an oil leak will contaminate the water that over six million (that’s 6,000,000) people depend on for drinking, irrigating, cooking and eating.
3. The land is designated by the Sioux as a sacred site.  
4. The DAPL was re-rerouted through indigenous lands ceded by the U.S. to the Sioux Nation by the treaties of Fort Laramie of  1851 and 1868.
5. The so-called easement allowing the pipeline to run through Standing Rock is illegally issued by the Army Corps of Engineers.
For these reasons, your board has the imperative necessity to divest forthwith of all entities capitalizing the Dakota Access Pipeline and all other pipelines.
Thank you.



TAKE THE NATURAL GUARD PLEDGE

Speak out about how militarism’s consumption of fossil fuel impacts the climate.
        
Engage in discussions reminding others of the cost of waging wars in terms of fuel consumption and resulting pollution of air, water and soils.

Remind others of the need to examine the role of the Pentagon and war contractors in contributing to planetary warming.

Join (or start) a people’s budget initiative in my community.


Reduce my and my household’s consumption. https://www.treehugger.com/culture/10-tips-make-every-day-earth-day.html

Reprint and circulate this flyer.


Flowers Amidst This Week’s Thorns




For the third time, a Trump immigration policy has been struck down on unconstitutional grounds by Judge William H. Orrick of the 9th District Court.  What about unconstitutional don’t they get?

News comes from the good-for-nothing Dems that a majority of House Dems now support medicare for all bill. Shall we hold our breath?






Louisiana Governor John Edwards calls his state’s disappearing coastline an emergency hoping to draw attention to the issue of global warming.

Bay Area Non-profit Project Equity transforms businesses into worker-owned cooperatives.
California may lead the way to universal health care. Sen. Ricardo Lara and Sen. Toni Atkins lead the way.

Ninth Circuit upholds Berkeley cell phone warning law: radio frequency radiation may be bad for your brain tumors.

City of San Francisco at work to create its own net neutrality on the assumption that the internet is a right for all.

Cities to divest from Wells Fargo: Alameda, Davis, and now Berkeley is expected to join them, moving its money to the public bank of Oakland now on the drawing board.

District of Columbia indemnifies Occupy DC activists for overlooking their civil rights, arresting them at Bank of America subprime mortgage protest.

Visionary police reforms in Providence, RI, provide an example for the rest of the country.

Berkeley Energy Group is putting coal miners back to work installing the largest solar project in Appalachia on top of a closed mountaintop strip mine, just one example of a massive  retooling of the energy industry throughout the country.

Because it’s Harvard: Harvard U elects to “pause” its investments in some fossil fuels.

Brazil calls a general strike to oppose austerity measures and serious curtailment f workers’ rights. Can you say greve geral?

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