With its legal hurdles all but cleared, Trans Mountain’s challenges move to a different court — the street

The Trans Mountain Expansion Project pipe going in the ground west of Edmonton.Postmedia file photo

CALGARY – With the last legal challenge to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project all but eliminated, experts say opposition to the pipeline now will move from the courts to the streets.

“We always said we’d do what it takes to stop this pipeline,” said Rueben George, manager of the TWN Sacred Trust and a member of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation, one of three First Nations that filed the legal challenge.

“We will take steps to make sure that Canada stays the way it is,” George said at a press conference that included chiefs and elected councillors from all the Indigenous groups involved in the case.

The Federal Court of Appeal Tuesday dismissed the case filed by Tsleil-Waututh First Nation, Squamish First Nation and Coldwater Indian Band, who argued the federal government failed to properly consult on the $10 billion oil pipeline which would pass through their territories.

It was the second such appeal by the opposed Indigenous groups of the pipeline. But where they won their first appeal in August 2018, this time the appeals court found the government had consulted properly.

Those Indigenous groups and aligned environmentalists opposed to the pipeline reiterated Tuesday that they’re committed to blocking the project. George said the decision would be appealed to the Supreme Court.

“We are deeply disappointed with the decision today but, as stated earlier, this is but one step available to us,” said Dustin Rivers, a spokesperson for and elected member of the Squamish Nation Council.

“B.C. has a long history of civil disobedience,” he added.

First Nations have 60 days to file an appeal.

We are deeply disappointed with the decision today but, as stated earlier, this is but one step available to us

Dustin Rivers, Squamish Nation Council

It’s unclear whether the Supreme Court will be willing to hear an appeal given the sharp wording of the decision, which was rendered unanimously and ordered the Indigenous groups to pay compensation to the defendants — the federal government, Canada Energy Regulator as well as Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Lawyers, pipeline executives and professors say they believe the legal challenges before the Trans Mountain pipeline project that runs between Edmonton and Vancouver are largely over, but most expect opposition to now take the form of on-the-ground protests.

Indeed, environmental organizations on the West Coast said they would continue to oppose the pipeline. Stand.earth said it had 27,000 pledges from people who would do “whatever it takes” to stop the pipeline.

“As long as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tries to build the Trans Mountain pipeline, we will continue to fight,” Stand.earth international program director Tzeporah Berman said in a release.

Despite the threat of delays, Tuesday’s court decision is “good news for workers,” said Progressive Contractors Association of Canada president Paul de Jong.

He added: “There could be more opposition in terms of physical resistance along the pipeline right of way (but) this project has taken far too long to move to construction.”

Construction work in Alberta and at the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, B.C. has been underway for months.

Public opinion in the Lower Mainland is divided over the project, said Simon Fraser University professor Shahin Dashtgard, who passes by the construction on the oil terminal on Burnaby Mountain every day.

“There are a substantial number of people that are either OK with it, or don’t have an opinion,” Dashtgard said, though he noted that polling consistently shows that between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of the population in the Vancouver region are opposed to the project and this could provide “a source of people” to protest the project.

Tuesday’s Appeals Court decision and the Supreme Court of Canada’s unanimous dismissal last month of B.C.’s case against the pipeline is likely to discourage civil disobedience to the project, he said.

“We have a country that believes in the rule of law and this was taken to the highest courts,” Dashtgard said.

A ramp-up in construction on the project is expected later this year.

Trans Mountain Corp. filed an updated construction schedule on Monday with the Canada Energy Regulator that showed the Crown corporation would begin “clearing and pipeline construction” in the Kamloops, B.C. area in March. The company has already been putting pipe in the ground in Alberta, and has been welding those pipes together since the end of 2019.

In an emailed statement, the company said it had hired 2,200 people for the project by the end of the third quarter of 2019 and would provide updated employment numbers in the coming weeks.

Overall, Tuesday’s decision provides a greater sense of optimism that the Trans Mountain project will be completed despite continued opposition and expectations of protests.

“It’s hard to predict what kind of civil disobedience could happen,” Canadian Energy Pipeline Association president and CEO Chris Bloomer said in an interview, adding that the court decision made clear that “we can’t keep having endless interventions.”

Tuesday’s decision does dismiss the idea that all of the concerns of Indigenous communities need to be resolved before a project can be approved.

“If we accepted those submissions, as a practical matter there would be no end to consultation, the project would never be approved, and the applicants would have a de facto veto right over it,” the decision reads.

Still, there is a specific area in which the appeals court decision might allow for a successful appeal to the Supreme Court, said University of Calgary assistant law professor David Wright.

“The court makes comments on the interplay between the duty to consult and the infringement analysis,” Wright said, adding that “there’s a lack of clarity in the law” between those two legal principles.

“This case is interesting because the court is speaking to that foggy area directly. It’s too early to say how good of a job they’ve done,” Wright said, adding that’s one area where the Supreme Court might be willing to listen to an appeal, even though the appeals court ruling was unanimous. SOURCE

‘We Must Grow This Movement’: Youth Climate Activists Ramp Up the Pressure

From school strikes to the harder edge of Extinction Rebellion, young climate activists are making their voices heard, and they’re increasingly politically engaged.

Hundreds of young climate activists and their supporters staged a climate strike outside of Chevron headquarters in San Ramon, California, in September calling for the oil company to abandon fossil fuels by 2025. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A new wave of climate protests hit cities around the world this week—this time aimed at shocking people with civil disobedience, fake blood on the pavement and bodies lying in the streets under signs that read: “Stop funding climate death.”

The Extinction Rebellion demonstrations have a harder edge than the student-led climate strikes that have brought millions to their feet around the world demanding leaders do more to slow climate change. While the school climate strikes end with students returning to class, these protests have often led to arrests.

But both show how young people are reinvigorating the social movement for climate action on a scale never seen before, and their organizers plan to keep up the pressure until more is done to slow climate change.

That widespread youth activism is also empowering more young people to turn their protests into political action, from pressuring lawmakers and businesses to take action to energizing voters.

The Extinction Rebellion activists and the school strikers are both decentralized coalitions that are giving young people a way to stand up for their future. Between them, the groups have a long list of school strikes, rallies and acts of civil disobedience planned through the rest of the year, including a major youth climate strike planned for Nov. 29, Black Friday, known for holiday shopping in the United States.

Alexandria Villaseñor, a 14-year-old climate activist from New York who founded Earth Uprising and is an organizer with the school climate strike group Fridays for Future, is emblematic of their determination. She announced last month that she would be taking her school education on the road as she tours the country to continue organizing climate strikes.

“I’ll be traveling and striking in a different city, or maybe even a different country, every Friday,” she wrote on Twitter. “We must grow this movement. We must get real action.”

Building on Social Justice Movements

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist who launched the Fridays for Future school walkouts, may have galvanized the global youth climate movement when she started her humble strikes in front of the Swedish Parliament last year, but it has been building for years.

In the U.S., the movement really learned from and built upon past civil rights and social justice movements, where tactics such as marching in the streets and occupying places of commerce or political power were used.

That’s one of the reasons the Green New Deal—the climate policy goals that the young Sunrise Movement activists brought to the halls of Congress—explicitly addresses building economic and political space for the most vulnerable communities affected by climate change as society transitions to a new energy economy, said Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, the North America director for the climate activist group 350.org. It’s also why the movement must explicitly connect social justice and climate work moving forward.

For some youth in the climate movement, the idea of addressing socioeconomic and racial disparities in the U.S. is a big part of their involvement.

“Young people of color, like myself, are affected by climate change most,” said Nyiesha Mallett, an 18-year-old climate activist from New York who is part Afro-Caribbean. “I should be one of the people who gets to come up with solutions.”

Ramping Up Local Fights

Climate groups in the U.S. are working to channel that youthful energy toward local policy battles, where they see higher chances of success.

In Washington state, young activists have joined a broad coalition pushing for a clean energy transition in the state, fighting for and, in many cases, winning ambitious policy battles, including the state’s target to reach 100 percent clean energy by 2045, the strongest clean electricity law in the nation.

“It’s not just taking back the White House and the Senate, not just passing federal legislation to address the crisis, but really making sure that we go deep on local … actions,” Toles O’Laughlin said.

That’s one reason 17-year-old Mariana Rodriguez from San Francisco joined the youth climate strikes last month, after seeing how climate change was impacting her state’s forests. “November is known as fire season,” she said. “And with all the fires that’s been happening around here, I can’t ignore something that’s happening right in front of me.”

The global youth climate marches on Sept. 20, 2019, brought millions of people into the streets in cities around the world. Young people in New York City marched through Wall Street. Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

In other parts of the country where support for climate action is less popular, activists in the climate movement are working to simply get elected officials to formally adopt statewide action plans. MORE

RELATED:

Fourth global climate strike planned days before UN climate summit

 

 

Extinction Rebellion protests: Green Party co-leader arrested as protesters win right to fight ‘unlawful’ police ban in court

Climate activists win go-ahead to mount legal action against Metropolitan Police 

The co-leader of the Green Party Jonathan Bartley was among more than 1,500 Extinction Rebellion activists arrested as the group continued its protests in defiance of a police ban.

Activists have been granted the go-ahead for legal action against London’s Metropolitan Police to challenge the public order banning more than two climate activists convening anywhere in the city. The hearing is scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

Politicians, human-rights groups and leading environmental figures including Greta Thunberg have condemned the ban as “unlawful” and “draconian”.

Meanwhile, mothers and babies from the group are blockading the of Google HQ to demand the tech giant stops funding climate deniers, as teenage protesters climb the entrance of Youtube HQ.

Other demonstrators blocked roads around Trafalgar Square, and some protested outside the offices of The Times and The Sun.

Lawyers for Extinction Rebellion submit judicial review of police ban 

Lawyers for Extinction Rebellion have submitted an application for judicial review of the Metropolitan Police’s ban on their protests to the High Court for urgent hearing later today.

Lawyers for #ExtinctionRebellion are at the Royal Courts of Justice this morning to file a judicial review of the @metpoliceuk’s ban on their protests under section 14. Tobias Garnett of XR lawyers group speaks to the media. pic.twitter.com/Ktmlo9Qsrr

— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) October 16, 2019

Last night Greta Thunberg condemned the Metropolitan Police’s ban of the Extinction Rebellion protests in London as “unlawful”.

“If standing up against the climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken,” she added.

The 16-year-old climate activist previously spoke at the group’s protests in April.

If standing up against the climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken.#ExtinctionRebellion https://t.co/i3S9gC0fpL

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) October 15, 2019

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The big polluters’ masterstroke was to blame the climate crisis on you and me

Fossil fuel giants have known the harm they do for decades. But they created a system that absolves them of responsibility

 Illustration: Eva Bee

Let’s stop calling this the Sixth Great Extinction. Let’s start calling it what it is: the “first great extermination”. A recent essay by the environmental historian Justin McBrien argues that describing the current eradication of living systems (including human societies) as an extinction event makes this catastrophe sound like a passive accident.

While we are all participants in the first great extermination, our responsibility is not evenly shared. The impacts of most of the world’s people are minimal. Even middle-class people in the rich world, whose effects are significant, are guided by a system of thought and action that is shaped in large part by corporations. 

We are guided by an ideology so familiar and pervasive that we do not even recognise it as an ideology. It is called consumerism

The Guardian’s polluters series reports that just 20 fossil fuel companies, some owned by states, some by shareholders, have produced 35% of the carbon dioxide and methane released by human activities since 1965. This was the year in which the president of the American Petroleum Institute told his members that the carbon dioxide they produced could cause “marked changes in climate” by the year 2000. They knew what they were doing.

Even as their own scientists warned that the continued extraction of fossil fuels could cause “catastrophic” consequences, the oil companies pumped billions of dollars into thwarting government action. They funded thinktanks and paid retired scientists and fake grassroots organisations to pour doubt and scorn on climate science. They sponsored politicians, particularly in the US Congress, to block international attempts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. They invested heavily in greenwashing their public image.

These efforts continue today, with advertisements by Shell and Exxon that create the misleading impression that they’re switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. In reality, Shell’s annual report reveals that it invested $25bn in oil and gas last year. But it provides no figure for its much-trumpeted investments in low-carbon technologies. Nor was the company able to do so when I challenged it.

BP’s oil refinery complex in Grangemouth, central Scotland. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

A paper published in Nature shows that we have little chance of preventing more than 1.5C of global heating unless existing fossil fuel infrastructure is retired. Instead the industry intends to accelerate production, spending nearly $5tn in the next 10 years on developing new reserves. It is committed to ecocide.

But the biggest and most successful lie it tells is this: that the first great extermination is a matter of consumer choice. In response to the Guardian’s questions, some of the oil companies argued that they are not responsible for our decisions to use their products. But we are embedded in a system of their creation – a political, economic and physical infrastructure that creates an illusion of choice while, in reality, closing it down.

We are guided by an ideology so familiar and pervasive that we do not even recognise it as an ideology. It is called consumerism. It has been crafted with the help of skilful advertisers and marketers, by corporate celebrity culture, and by a media that casts us as the recipients of goods and services rather than the creators of political reality. It is locked in by transport, town planning and energy systems that make good choices all but impossible. It spreads like a stain through political systems, which have been systematically captured by lobbying and campaign finance, until political leaders cease to represent us, and work instead for the pollutocrats who fund them.

In such a system, individual choices are lost in the noise. Attempts to organise boycotts are notoriously difficult, and tend to work only when there is a narrow and immediate aim. The ideology of consumerism is highly effective at shifting blame: witness the current ranting in the billionaire press about the alleged hypocrisy of environmental activists. Everywhere I see rich westerners blaming planetary destruction on the birth rates of much poorer people, or on “the Chinese”. This individuation of responsibility, intrinsic to consumerism, blinds us to the real drivers of destruction.

A protester is detained during an Extinction Rebellion demonstration in Whitehall, London. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters FacebookTwitterPinterest 

The power of consumerism is that it renders us powerless. It traps us within a narrow circle of decision-making, in which we mistake insignificant choices between different varieties of destruction for effective change. It is, we must admit, a brilliant con.

It’s the system we need to change, rather than the products of the system. It is as citizens that we must act, rather than as consumers. But how? Part of the answer is provided in a short book published by one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam, called Common Sense for the 21st Century. I don’t agree with everything it says, but the rigour and sweep of its analysis will, I think, ensure that it becomes a classic of political theory.

It begins with the premise that gradualist campaigns making small demands cannot prevent the gathering catastrophes of climate and ecological breakdown. Only mass political disruption, out of which can be built new and more responsive democratic structures, can d

By studying successful mobilisations, such as the Children’s March in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 (which played a critical role in ending racial segregation in the US), the Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig in 1989 (which snowballed until they helped bring down the East German regime), and the Jana Andolan movement in Nepal in 2006 (which brought down the absolute power of the monarchy and helped end the armed insurgency), Hallam has developed a formula for effective “dilemma actions”. A dilemma action is one that puts the authorities in an awkward position. Either the police allow civil disobedience to continue, thereby encouraging more people to join, or they attack the protesters, creating a powerful “symbolism of fearless sacrifice”, thereby encouraging more people to join. If you get it right, the authorities can’t win.

Among the crucial common elements, he found, are assembling thousands of people in the centre of the capital city, maintaining a strictly nonviolent discipline, focusing on the government and continuing for days or weeks at a time. Radical change, his research reveals, “is primarily a numbers game. Ten thousand people breaking the law has historically had more impact than small-scale, high-risk activism.” The key challenge is to organise actions that encourage as many people as possible to join. This means they should be openly planned, inclusive, entertaining, peaceful and actively respectful. You can join such an action today, convened by Extinction Rebellion in central London.

Hallam’s research suggests that this approach offers at least a possibility of breaking the infrastructure of lies the fossil fuel companies have created, and developing a politics matched to the scale of the challenges we face. It is difficult and uncertain of success. But, he points out, the chances that politics as usual will meet our massive predicament with effective action are zero. Mass dilemma actions could be our last, best chance of preventing the great extermination. SOURCE

 

CAN EXTINCTION REBELLION BUILD A U.S. CLIMATE MOVEMENT BIG ENOUGH TO SAVE THE EARTH?

The environmental group Extinction Rebellion staged a “die-in” at the Charging Bull statue in Manhattan on Oct. 7, 2019. Photo: Hilary Swift for The Intercept

A CROWD OF about 200 black-clad members of the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion gathered Monday morning at the southern end of New York City’s financial district. Some held banners painted with ghostly white animals or cardboard cutouts of trees and waves. In the background, a New Orleans-style jazz funeral band warmed up tubas, and one of the march’s emcees instructed people on the proper way to wail. (“Dig down and pull out your grief — because you gotta cry!”)

At the head of the procession, 20-year-old Ayisha Siddiqa took the megaphone. She explained how she’d come to the U.S. from a poor part of Pakistan when she was 5 years old and had lost family members as a result of frequent power outages, which are expected to increase globally as the climate crisis deepens. Attention turned to Richard McLachlan, a 68-year-old New Zealander, as he and another activist began reading Extinction Rebellion’s declaration of rebellion.

“The science is clear: We are in the sixth mass extinction event, and we will face catastrophe if we do not act swiftly and robustly,” the activists said. “We, in alignment with our consciences and our reasoning, declare ourselves in rebellion against our government and the corrupted, inept institutions that threaten our future.” It was the kickoff to an event dubbed Rebellion Week, part of an international series of XR actions.

Performers with Bread and Puppet Theater wait in Battery Park before the start of Monday’s protest with XR.

The environmental group Extinction Rebellion stages a die-in at the Charging Bull statue in Manhattan on Oct. 7, 2019.Photos: Hilary Swift for The Intercept

As the group started moving out of the park, a figure appeared in the distance, waving Extinction Rebellion’s green flag from atop Wall Street’s charging bull statue. Dyed red corn syrup oozed down the bull’s back, and activists wearing white shirts splattered with fake blood played dead at the animal’s feet.

By sunset, police had arrested 700 people across the globe for participation in actions under XR’s banner, including 93 “die-in” participants in New York. That was the point. By getting arrested in visually compelling acts of civil disobedience inspired by Gandhi, the civil rights movement, and ACT UP, Extinction Rebellion hopes to jolt world leaders into taking action on the climate emergency.

Since the movement was born in the United Kingdom one year ago, it has grown to a network of at least 485 groups in 72 countries. Many observers have responded with a reaction similar to the one elicited by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg: Finally, someone is truthfully confronting scientists’ apocalyptic climate forecasts with the urgency they deserve. MORE

 

Jane Fonda leads climate change protests, plans to get arrested on her birthday

 

Photograph: Arthur Mola/Invision/AP

Two-time Academy Award and seven-time Golden Globe winner Jane Fonda has played many roles, most recently on television as the wife of a gay husband who comes out about his closeted relationship with his best friend…

But this week, Fonda takes on the role of climate activist and brings it to a new stage: the Capitol, where she will demonstrate until she is arrested. And she will do the same thing for 14 Fridays – until she has to film another season of the television drama “Grace and Frankie.”

“I’m going to take my body, which is kind of famous and popular right now because of the [television] series and I’m going to go to D.C. and I’m going to have a rally every Friday,” Fonda said in an interview with The Washington Post. “It’ll be called ‘Fire Drill Friday.’ And we’re going to engage in civil disobedience and we’re going to get arrested every Frida

Call her the Greta Thunberg of the octogenarian set

The 16-year-old Thunberg, a Swedish high school student, has rocked the world with her blunt denunciations of generations that have failed to slow climate change. The 81-year-old Fonda, who says she was moved reading about Thunberg, says she believes she can have her own impact.

When Thunberg studied climate change, “she realised what was happening and that this was barrelling at us like an engine,” Fonda said. “It so traumatised her that she stopped speaking and eating. And when I read that it rocked me, because I knew that Greta had seen the truth. And the urgency came into my DNA the way it hadn’t before.”

“Greta said we have to behave like it’s a crisis,” Fonda added. “We have to behave like our houses are on fire.”

Fonda has a distinguished acting career, including political films such as “Coming Home” about Vietnam War wounds both mental and physical, “9 to 5” about working women, and “The China Syndrome” about a nuclear power plant that was released shortly before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

This time Fonda is planning to go about things differently

Every Thursday evening, starting Oct. 17, there will be online teach-ins featuring climate scientists talking about different aspects of global warming. Fonda said she would like to “draw connections” by discussing how violence against women increases in communities suffering from climate change.

Then on Fridays, she will go to the steps of the Capitol building holding a placard and will refuse to obey three requests by the Capitol Police to cease and desist. She’s not expecting a mass rally, more like a handful of people.

Actress and activist Jane Fonda talks to a crowd of protestors during a global climate rally at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019. A wave of climate change protests swept across the globe Friday, with hundreds of thousands of young people sending a message to leaders headed for a U.N. summit: The warming world can’t wait for action. (AP Photo/David Swanson)

This Friday’s launch coincides with bigger protests scheduled worldwide

She has invited some of her celebrity friends: Actor Ted Danson of “Cheers” fame, who has become involved in ocean conservation; “The Vagina Monologues” playwright Eve Ensler; and actresses Kyra Sedgwick and Catherine Keener.

She’s reached out to leaders of Black Lives Matter and the Sunrise Movement. Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, will join the demonstrations, which will start at 11 a.m. Fridays on the side of the Capitol facing the Supreme Court.

Fonda said she also intends to make demands

“The number one thing is cutting all funding and permits for new developments for fossil fuel and exports and processing and refining,” she said. She said that if efforts go into discouraging demand for oil and gas and coal, “it’s not going to do any good” if companies are still developing prospects. “It’s not going to make any difference,” she said.

Fonda also wants to get out the vote, not only for presidential ballots but also down to local government to make climate policy a litmus test.

People take part during the Climate Strike, Friday, Sept. 20, 2019 in New York. Young people afraid for their futures protested around the globe Friday to implore leaders to tackle climate change, turning out by the hundreds of thousands to insist that the warming world can’t wait for action. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)

It’s not Fonda’s first climate protest

In 2016, she spent Thanksgiving with protesters gathered in an effort to block an oil pipeline through land claimed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota. She has protested in Los Angeles, Vancouver and Seattle.

But she said she wanted to “step it up” after reading two books: Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’s book “People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent” and Naomi Klein’s “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.”

Klein opens her book with an essay about Thunberg and her Asperger’s syndrome. Fonda says it showed her that some people on the autism spectrum are “totally laser focused” and “information comes at them pure and direct.”

“It’s as simple as this. We have according to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] 12 years, but that was a year ago,” Fonda says. “So according to their report we have 11 years left. Eleven years to do something that has never been done in human history. And if we don’t do it, huge parts of the planet are going to be uninhabitable, by the way.”

Fire Drill Fridays@FireDrillFriday

Vote, speak & act in support of the demands of youth climate strikers:

A Green New Deal
Respect of Indigenous Land & Sovereignty
Environmental Justice
Protection & Restoration of Biodiversity
Implementation of Sustainable Agriculture#FireDrillFriday #FridaysForFuture

11:59 PM – Oct 10, 2019

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Klein pushes for Green New Deal in the face of climate crisis

Naomi Klein (centre) launched the Leap Manifesto in Toronto in 2015. Darren Calabrese / The Canadian Press files

There are few global or international challenges that have brought our species together in solidarity. One can think to D-Day or the Apollo moon landing as examples of western countries using, in the former case, our collective capacity to push back totalitarian hate, and in the latter, defying what we knew was possible in terms of space exploration.

But there has never been a time in human history, which is not very long, where we have stared collectively into the mirror of our own existence.

For the past six decades, we have known that we have been causing catastrophic damage to our home. If you dispute the history of our destruction, Sept. 27 of this year marked the 57th anniversary of the release of Rachel Carson’s environmental science book, Silent Spring. (It should be mandatory reading for all educators.)

Sept. 27 of this year also marked the largest student demonstration in human history, with millions of youth leaving their classrooms to fight for their future and wake the rest of us up. It is this existential struggle that has compelled Naomi Klein, Canadian journalist, activist, and progressive, to release her latest book, On Fire: The Burning Case for a New Green Deal.

The author of No Logo and This Changes Everything, among others, was also a critical player in the development of the Leap Manifesto and the Green New Deal, supported by none other than U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and championed by U.S. congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In On Fire, Klein is inspired by the new voice of moral courage on our planet, Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg, and the millions of youth turned activists who should be enjoying this time of adolescence but, owing to our greed and neglect, are forced to fight for the very thing that sustains life: planet Earth.

According to Klein, “learning has become a radicalizing act,” whereby in spite of adults, our children are participating in civil disobedience because “they are the first for whom climate disruption on a planetary scale is not a future threat, but a live reality.” They no longer have the idle pleasure of succumbing to what Aristotle calls akrasia, the human tendency to act against our better judgment.

On Fire provides a series of Klein’s essays written over the past decade, which not only chronicle the monumental and catastrophic canaries in the coal mine (the 2010 BP explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the rise of fracking, the burning of the boreal forest, etc.), but also make the case for the need of a new understanding of how we live together. Of how we treat and share resources. Of how we become stewards of the Earth so that everyone has the means for a decent life.

And much of this work began in 2015, as Klein and other leaders began to develop the Leap Manifesto. Only four years ago, Canadians and the world were presented with a plan towards sustainability, equity and stability that was scoffed at by the likes of Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau and even Thomas Mulcair. Fast forward to 2019, and we’re still debating who will champion which pipeline.

People rally near Parliament Hill in Ottawa as part of a climate rally, one of many held worldwide on Friday, Sept. 27.   Justin Tang / The Canadian PressAnd we wonder why our children are frustrated and afraid. “They understand that they are fighting for the fundamental right to live full lives,” Klein writes — lives that have been stolen from them.

Following the Leap Manifesto, in 2019 the Green New Deal arrived on Capitol Hill and has provided the basis for a global conversation about a positive pathway forward. Inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Klein helped develop a framework that checks unbridled capitalism, addresses social inequity and fully realizes the planetary emergency that stares us in the face.

The Green New Deal calls for a fundamental shift in how we operate. It calls for us, Klein argues, to “swerve off our perilous trajectory” through “sweeping industrial and infrastructure overhaul.”

It calls for us to stop denying the future of our kids and to become their allies as they lead the way to a positive, inclusive and thriving future.

The global climate strike, held in cities in dozens of countries on Sept. 27, saw millions of youth leave their classrooms in one of the largest worldwide demonstrations in history.   Justin Tang / The Canadian Press files 

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Extinction Rebellion co-founder arrested over Heathrow drone plan

Climate activist Roger Hallam sought to shut down Heathrow Airport on Friday

Heathrow Pause activists with the drones they plan to fly. Reuters

A co-founder of the Extinction Rebellion activist group has been arrested a day before he planned to shut down London’s Heathrow Airport.

Roger Hallam and another four people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance. Climate change activists intend to ground flights at Heathrow on Friday morning by flying toy drones in its exclusion area, in protest at global warming and plans to build a third runway at the airport.

Heathrow Pause@HeathrowPause

We will not be silenced. Please spread this far and wide and keep the flame of Heathrow Pause alight . We are parents protecting our children @GeorgeMonbiot @GretaThunberg @ExtinctionR #ClimateCrisis #ActNow #Genocide #Ecocide #CitizensAssembly https://twitter.com/RaphaelThelen/status/1172151205574918144 …

Raphael Thelen@RaphaelThelen

Roger Hallam, Co-Founder of Extinction Rebellion, was just arrested in front of my eyes. From what I understand because of the planned „Heathrow Pause“-Action. More soon @SPIEGELONLINE @extinctionr

11:41 AM – Sep 12, 2019

“Our policing plan is aimed at preventing criminal activity which poses a significant safety and security risk to the airport, and the thousands of passengers that will be using it,” said Laurence Taylor of London’s Metropolitan Police.

Police had already warned the Heathrow Pause, a group of individual activists with close links to Extinction Rebellion, they faced arrest if they went ahead with their plans.

“In these circumstances, we believe these arrests to be a proportionate response to preventing criminal activity that could significantly impact on a major piece of national infrastructure,” said Mr Taylor, a Deputy Assistant Commissioner.

“We remain fully prepared for the planned protest tomorrow, and will work quickly to identify criminal activity and arrest anyone committing offences.”

Members of the Pause had already said they expected to be detained but would continue with their plans regardless. It is unclear how many of them are. MORE

Heathrow protest thwarted as police use radiowaves to jam Extinction Rebellion group drones

B.C. Green’s Weaver ‘very worried’ about civil disobedience after pipeline approval

WATCH THE VIDEO:  B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver tells Mercedes Stephenson he understands if there is civil disobedience by opponents of the Trans Canada pipeline expansion project, and says the decision will cost the Liberals at the ballot box this fall.

B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver says he is “very worried” about the potential for civil disobedience in light of the approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

The controversial pipeline, which will triple the amount of tanker traffic in the waters around B.C.’s Lower Mainland, was approved by the Liberals last week after a Federal Court judge blocked it from going forward in the fall of 2018.

That decision prompted a fresh marine impact assessment by the National Energy Board as well as renewed consultations with 117 Indigenous communities along the pipeline route from Alberta’s Fort McMurray to Burnaby, B.C.

READ MORE: Trans Mountain pipeline expansion gets green light to proceed

And while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed construction will resume this year, Weaver suggested he would not be surprised to see pipeline opponents take matters into their own hands to try to stop it moving forward.

“As a political party, you will not see me standing up and condoning or participating in civil disobedience. I don’t believe as a lawmaker it behooves me as such a person to actually break said law,” he said in an interview with the West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson.

“However, I understand that in times of strife, people find different ways of expressing themselves. I’m very worried about how this is going to end up.” MORE

Extinction Rebellion – “This is not the end”

 

The biggest display of civil disobedience on a national scale in decades. What’s next?

…Police officers carry rebels by their arms and legs towards police vans, and with every arrest a cheer erupts, followed by chants of, ‘We love you’. People are playing Christmas songs on the clarinet and singing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ around a set of drums. A giant inflatable elephant with ‘Ecocide’ printed across it is marched around the crowds. “This isn’t the beginning, this has been building for a really long time.But this splash, this dedication, this passion and what all of us have experienced here is a turning point.”

The inflatable ‘Ecocide’ elephant was marched around crowds at the Marble Arch site

British actress Emma Thompson talks to members of the media from atop the pink boat after police officers surrounded the boat being used as a stage

Behind all of these demonstrations are three demands, laid out on banners, leaflets, direct requests to the government, and even on the pink boat: Tell the Truth, Act Now, and Beyond Politics.

They want the government to declare a climate and ecological emergency, to act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025, and to create a citizen’s assembly to oversee the changes needed to achieve these goals. MORE