Without a doubt, Coca-Cola is one of the worst companies on the planet. From its murderous human rights violations stamping out unions in Latin America (especially at Colombian bottling plants) to its marketing to youngsters to its environmental record (especially concerning water), it is hands down a terrible corporation getting away with incredible harm on this planet. So it’s refreshing indeed to see Killer Coke get its comeuppance in this amazing Australian Greenpeace TV advert about Coke and plastic pollution. While it’s not surprising that Coke is blocking a new recycling scheme in Australia it is surprising that the advert (Read more…)
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Wikileaks has been a great source of information that governments and corporations wanted to deny or keep secret. Now Greenpeace has modelled a site, Arctic Truth, for whistleblowers who work in the world of arctic drilling for oil. As climate change turns the frozen north into accessible waters oil companies want to move in and further the reach of their harmful industry. Even people in the industry are realizing how dangerous it is to drill closer to the north pole than ever before and have started to speak up. The website is intended to shield the identities of whistleblowers (Read more…) I have written this piece in an attempt to evaluate the actual contribution to society of a prominent Canadian who espouses extreme right-wing views. I feel it is important, from time to time, to compare actual performance to stated principles. If you find this critique of interest, please send the link to others. Nick One of the champions of Canada’s right-wing corporate elite is finally calling it quits. Gwyn Morgan, 66, is stepping down in May as Board Chairman of SNC-Lavalin, the troubled, giant engineering and construction firm trying to survive a series of scandals, a lack of public confidence, and fluctuating share values. (Read more…) As US renews pledge to drill in Arctic waters, Greenland places moratorium on new leases By: Lauren McCauley | Common Dreams: A White House official reaffirmed Wednesday the Obama administration’s commitment to the Arctic offshore drilling program despite the “dangerous risk” of catastrophic consequences for the pristine marine ecosystem. Speaking via video [...] The post Despite risk to marine ecosystem White House reaffirms commitment to Arctic drilling appeared first on The Canadian Progressive | News & Analysis. Every extractive capitalist economy needs a mechanism that allows corporate heavyweights to snuggle up with elected officials. In the US, there’s American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and if you haven’t yet been horrified by Bill Moyers’ piece on how ALEC essentially enables corporations to write state laws, you’re in for a treat. Where I live, we have the seemingly innocuous Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA). Made up of municipal leaders and business partners, NOMA has been an outspoken advocate for the forestry industry, butting heads with the province over issues like the Endangered Species Act. Quite open about its allegiances, . . . → Read More: Boreal Citizen: Boreal greenwashing: Mill-town politics in Northern Ontario “The agreement asks so little of Canada, Denmark, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the US, that it is effectively useless” by Greenpeace | Feb.4, 2013: WASHINGTON – On the eve of the Arctic Council environment minister’s meeting, a leaked copy of the Council’s much-heralded oil spill response agreement reveals deeply inadequate measures READ MORE …which explains why the Canadian government is Hell-and-High-Water-bent on building a pipeline, any pipeline, anywhere. First, the stats Over the past few months, new stories have noted that Canada’s oil sector isn’t getting full price for its heavy oil — in large part because American pipelines are well-supplied with newly-flowing tight oil (“shale oil”) from North Dakota. As a side note, I should clarify that heavy oil — termed Western Canada Select — is a somewhat-upgraded form of bitumen. Removing the sulfur and upgrading the oil a bit more, would turn it into the “light sweet crude” used . . . → Read More: Eclectic Lip: Alberta oil selling at 50% discount to world price… 
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Download: earthgauge-podcast-jan17-2013.mp3 Earthgauge Radio returns this week with Keith Stewart of Greenpeace who will tell us about the December 2011 letter he obtained through an Access to Information request from oil companies to the Harper government. As it turns out, what the oil industry wants, the Harper government gives – in this case, they wanted drastic changes to Canada’s environmental laws. And with the omnibus Budget Bills of the last year, we saw that Canada’s Conservative government was more than happy to oblige. We also talk to Alex Hebert of SwitchHop to learn how you can reduce energy consumption . . . → Read More: Earthgauge Radio: Earthgauge Radio January 17: Keith Stewart of Greenpeace and Alex Hebert of SwitchHop.com
Download: keith-stewart-edited-forair.mp3 Roughly one year ago, the federal Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, issued an open letter attacking “environmental and other radical groups” that “threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.” Canada’s regulatory system was “broken”, he declared, and changing it was “an urgent matter of Canada’s national interest.” How interesting then to learn this week that Greenpeace had uncovered, through an Access to Information request, a letter that was sent by representatives of the oil industry to the federal Ministers of the Environment and Natural Resources in December 2011 requesting major . . . → Read More: Earthgauge Radio: Interview with Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Friday, January 11, 2013 Kudos to Greenpeace Canada for finding something of a smoking gun exposing the role of the oil and gas industry in the gutting of Canada’s environmental laws. Greenpeace has released a letter from the Energy Framework Initiative (EFI), representing every major oil and gas industry association, asking that the government undertake a major overhaul of six critical environmental statutes that inconvenienced the industry. Five of the statutes have since been replaced or seen major amendments through the dismantling of our country’s environmental safety net s in omnibus bills C-38 and C-45, and further amendments . . . → Read More: Environmental Law Alert Blog: The Smoking Gun: Who was the real author of the 2012 omnibus bills? What’s worse than oil companies spending millions to buy off politicians? Oil companies getting them for free. The oil sector is vital to Canada’s economy, but so are a lot of industries and you don’t see them drafting government policy. From the CBC: A letter obtained by Greenpeace through access to information laws and passed on to the CBC reveals the oil and gas industry was granted its request that the federal government change a series of environmental laws to advance “both economic growth and environmental performance.” Within 10 months of the request, the industry had almost everything . . . → Read More: The Scott Ross: Conservatives Bad At Selling Out The world’s largest clothing retailer Zara has committed to going toxic-free. After pressure from the environmental-concsious group Greenpeace the company has joined a handful of other large corporations that are (or soon will be) disclosing what toxins go into their products and how those chemicals are dealt with. Zara’s commitment to act more transparently is a milestone in the way clothing is manufactured. It’s an important step in providing local communities, journalists and officials with the information they need to ensure that local water supplies are not turned into public sewers for industry. Zara’s transparency revolution will be key to . . . → Read More: Things Are Good: Zara commits to go toxic-free . . . → Read More: Canadian Progressive: Canadians Care About the Great Bear Rainforest (VIDEO) Duke-Energy.gif A coalition of environmental, civil rights and democracy reform groups today called upon Duke Energy to join the 38 other companies that have left the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. In their letter sent to Duke CEO Jim Rogers this morning, the coalition requests that Duke Energy "disassociate and stop funding ALEC immediately." "We collectively call upon Duke Energy to drop all financial and staff support to ALEC due not only to their role in blocking clean energy implementation and solutions to global warming, but due to their direct attacks on democracy and our civil rights. . . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: Coalition Calls On Duke Energy To Dump American Legislative Exchange Council
ALEC, american legislative exchange council, center for media and democracy, Checks and Balances Project, Common Cause, Credo, Desmogblog, Energy Action Coalition, Friends of the Earth, general, Greenpeace, oil change international, progressive change campaign committee, public citizen, southern energy neywork Since satellite tracking began in 1979 the lowest readings of Arctic sea-ice have all been within the last six years. This year has seen a record breaking retreat of sea-ice with weeks of summer still ahead and more melt likely on the way. Independent: The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado said that the 2007 record was broken on Sunday with two or three weeks of the melt season still remaining, suggesting that this year’s sea ice will retreat substantially further than at any time in the satellite era. The snow and ice centre said that . . . → Read More: Drive-by Planet: Arctic ice cap melt: record low in 2012 shutterstock_91442597.jpg This is guest post by Megan Pitz. As another sweltering summer day over 100 degrees came to a close in the Washington, D.C. region, citizens of nearby Alexandria, Virginia witnessed the closure of the Potomac River Generating Station (PRGS) coal-fired power plant also known as the 'Mirant Plant.' The closure was expected by the community – as much as anything can be that you fight for – but it didn’t happen overnight. It began in 2003 with citizen-activists Elizabeth Chimento and Poul Hertzel’s quest to learn the source of black soot-like residue coating the windowsills . . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: Conquering Coal – A Tale of One City’s Fight Assorted content to end your weekend. - Lana Payne criticizes two forms of cash hoarding: both the assets sitting idle in corporate coffers, and the money that’s been funneled offshore by wealthy individuals: By the end of each episode (of “Hoarders”)…the audience finds out if the featured hoarders have been able to get their behaviour under control or if they have “fallen into the deep end of this painful disease.”The difference between these hoarders and those we have been reading about in recent days in newspapers like The Guardian and The Globe and Mail is that one . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links The Yes Men are at it again and this time with Greenpeace to show how efficient Shell is….at killing all of us. They created a website called Arctic Ready that looks like Shell is looking for crowd sourced advertising content, and of course, people around the net have submitted some pretty great messages. Here at Shell, we’re committed to online social media. After all, it’s the fuel that lubricates the engines of internet communication. In June, thousands of you demonstrated this by explaining, online, how Arctic energy production will transform the world and possibly provide affordable fuel for several . . . → Read More: Things Are Good: A Fine Example of Culture Jamming Greenpeace Rejected Billboard.png After a Plains Midstream Canada pipeline spilled between 160,000 and 480,000 liters of oil into Jackson Creek near the Red Deer River in Alberta this month, premier Alison Redford called the incident “an exception.” Yet, as Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Mike Hudema reports, this spill comes as no surprise given Alberta’s aging pipeline infrastructure and when considering that, in 2010 alone, pipelines across the country experienced 687 ‘failures’ resulting in 3,416 cubic meters of spilled toxic pollutants. That’s why Greenpeace decided to send Premier Redford a strong message “about the need to invest . . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: Greenpeace Clean Energy Billboard Rejected by Pattison Former chief of the Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation Terrance Nelson announces his run for national chief of the Assembly of First Nations: So, what is my plan? 1. Support the Yinka Dene! The Northern Gateway project is dead if I am elected national chief. The Kinder Morgan expansion will become the next topic of discussion after Gateway. This will wake up the Asians, the Americans, and the world that First Nations in Canada will not simply stand by the wayside as our resource wealth is sold off by the immigrants. The immigrant “free ride” on our natural resource wealth . . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Northern Gateway Pot Pourri Rio+20.png DeSmogBlog has obtained the final negotiating text that will emerge from the Rio+20 Earth Summit and it is an utter disappointment to anyone who hoped that world leaders would pull together a meaningful global agreement on ending fossil fuel subsidies or other needed steps to protect future generations from resource depletion and global climate change. Read the final text here: "The Future We Want"[.DOC] or [.PDF provided by DeSmog for those without Word] Update: The Guardian (which first posted the text earlier today) has this summary of the implications: Barring a last-minute rejection . . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: Breaking: Leaked Rio+20 Earth Summit Final Agreed Text – Utterly Inadequate Response to Global Crises Exxon-Mobil-XTO-Energy-e1338448150794.jpeg This is a guest post by Connor Gibson, cross-posted from Greenpeace. Wake up and smell the frack fluid! But don't ask what's in it, at least not in Ohio, cause it's still not your right to know. Ohio is in the final stages of making an Exxon trojan horse on hydrofracking into state law, and it appears that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) connected Exxon's lawyers with co-sponsors of Ohio Senate Bill 315: at least 33 of the 45 Ohio legislators who co-sponsored SB 315 are ALEC members, and language from portions of the . . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: ALEC Slips Exxon Fracking Loopholes into New Ohio Law More than two years after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and BP's well spewed millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Greenpeace has finally been granted access to pictures that show the real impact of the oil on marine life. The pictures were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) and show a very different side of the Gulf than what the media, BP, and the federal government have portrayed. These images are among those obtained by Greenpeace: read more Picture this . . . . The directors of 25 or 30 of Canada’s leading social activist organizations, unions and grassroots groups are hived away in a secluded location for a long weekend. At the conclusion of three exhausting days of discussion and argument, they announce they have created the framework for a new and powerful public interest co-operative movement. They explain that they expect the co-operative venture – let’s call it One Big Campaign (OBC) for the time being – will expand to include thousands of organizations that will work together to challenge the destruction being carried out by the Harper regime and its right-wing allies. The movement would be a non-binding, co-operative process, not a new formal organization. Partner groups would be able to opt in or out of any number of campaigns. When campaigns were conducted the resources of partner groups would be used. There is no . . . → Read More: A Different Point of View….: Social activist groups can form powerful ‘One Big Campaign’ to take on Harper Canada’s progressive community needs to make some significant changes if it hopes to slow down the assault being carried out on the country by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and their right-wing allies. The observations and suggestions I make in this three-part series are based on what I was able to learn during 16 years working on campaigning with public interest organizations in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, our Canadian progressive movement is not strategically organized to be able to take on Harper’s majority right-wing government. Many individual groups are using outdated, ineffective strategies. The first article explored the reluctance . . . → Read More: A Different Point of View….: Part Two of Three Part Series: What progressive groups must do to defeat, or stymie the Harper regime |
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