Tar Sands

Building Clean Energy Project In Path Of KXL

August 19, 2013 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands, Video

The Keystone XL pipeline is proposed to run through hundreds of Nebraska homes, farms and ranches, crossing the delicate Sandhills and putting the critical Ogallala Aquifer at risk. Nebraskans are standing up for their future by literally building the clean energy future they need. They are declaring their independence from dirty energy and challenging Big Oil to show their true stripes by constructing a wind turbine and solar-powered barn immediately in the path of the proposed pipeline, and using creative tactics to resist pipeline construction before it begins. If President Obama approves Keystone XL, he'll then have to tear down clean and locally-produced energy to make way for dirty and foreign tarsands.

Officer Strangelove, Or How To Stop Worrying, Get Shit Done

August 15, 2013 J., www.gptarsandsresistance.org Organize! Energy, Environment, Fearless Summer, Tar Sands

We’re not surprised, and neither are we scared. The police were obvious in their machismo and the quality of their observations was laughable at best. In terms of inter-agency communications, we know that the history of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-extraction resistance movements is permeated with government repression. We acknowledge surveillance as a far-cry from the type of repression that other groups and individuals experience, and stand in solidarity with those who have been incarcerated on fabricated charges (Leonard Peltier, just one of many) or have been physically attacked by the United States government with military force (the MOVE bombing, and countless other incidents). Together we will build a movement that can weather any storm, but it starts right now with acknowledging that the roots of our struggle go back before “climate justice” was ever a term.

Civil Disobedience As Law Enforcement

August 14, 2013 Jeremy Brecher, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Democracy, Tar Sands

All along I believed that these actions were justified, even though they meant breaking the law[...]Since being arrested at the White House, my perspective on the nature of such actions has changed. After learning about a fundamental principle of American law known as the public trust doctrine, I have come to believe that the U.S. government and other governments around the world are violating their own most fundamental responsibilities to their own people when they allow fossil fuel producers and users to devastate the earth’s atmosphere with greenhouse gases.

Legacy Of Uranium Mining Continues To Destroy Indigenous Communities

August 12, 2013 Charmaine White Face and Crystal Zevon, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Environment, Food and Agriculture, Human Rights, Racism, Tar Sands

U. S. Forest Service employees in their uniforms, and some other people from Standing Rock Reservation were already at the site. We met with them and were informed that the reason for the meeting was that the U. S. Forest Service needed to build a catch pond to catch radioactive runoff from the abandoned uranium mines. What?! I was shocked! Abandoned uranium mines! Radioactive runoff! This was Harding County, the Cattle Capitol of the world. Sheep, cattle, and horses were the only things to be seen for miles and miles as they grazed on the prairie grasslands. What was this about abandoned uranium mines?

Inquiry Launched Into Keystone Environmental Report

August 11, 2013 Zack Colman,www.thehill.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

The State Department’s internal watchdog has “initiated an inquiry” into whether the contractor Foggy Bottom used for a draft environmental analysis on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline had a conflict of interest. The move is a response to allegations from several outside groups, Doug Welty, a spokesman with the State Department Office of Inspector General, told The Hill on Friday. The development raises the possibility of another redo of the analysis assessing Keystone’s environmental impact.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Vibrant Movement For Green Energy Economy

August 9, 2013 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Energy, Environment, Fearless Summer, Fracking, Tar Sands, TPP

Impressive environmental protests have been organized by a wide range people calling for an end to radical energy and a transformation to a clean energy economy. Radical energy includes fuel derived from extreme extraction methods like tar sands, hydrofracking and off-shore drilling for oil or methane gas and mountain top removal for coal. This is costly energy, not only in dollars but in its impact on the environment; and it is causing an impressive growth in people taking action to protect the planet. Rather than building the upgraded energy infrastructure we need to reduce wasted energy and to efficiently store and transport energy from the sun and wind, the United States has embarked on building pipelines as well as relying on trains to carry oil and gas.

The Links Between Fracking, Tar Sands and the State Department

August 7, 2013 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog Educate! Energy, Fracking, Tar Sands

There are numerous ties between key members of the fracking industry and groups pushing for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. And these threads all lead back, one way or another, to Environmental Resources Management, Inc. (ERM Group). ERM Group did the official U.S. State Department's environmental review for Keystone XL pipeline. The review, published in March 2013, determined the pipeline will have negligible climate change impacts (the review dealt with the northern segment of the pipeline as the southern half, now known as the "Gulf Coast Pipeline," received an expedited Executive Order permit by President Barack Obama in March 2012).

Leaked Stratfor Powerpoint Shows Corporation’s Fear Of Activist Campaigns

August 3, 2013 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Strategize! Corporatism, Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

If you ever doubted that activists have an impact on big business interests, this leaked Stratfor document should convince you that they take us very seriously. The document focuses on protesters trying to stop the extraction, transport and development of tar sands, which they call oil sands. They divide the various groups involved in the effort to stop tar sands into four categories, radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists. As we can see in a previous article their strategic approach is to divide these groups, pull opportunists and realists into compromised positions, convince idealists they have the facts wrong and isolate the most dangerous group, the radicals.

Nonviolent Action Shuts Down Tar Sands Mine In Utah

August 2, 2013 Staff, www.peacefuluprising.org Resist! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Activists remain at the tar sands mine site and dozens continue to block Seep Ridge Road near PR Springs campground, preventing extraction industry traffic from passing. Three people had locked themselves to heavy machinery in order to prevent the progress of road construction, and it was determined that work was stopped for the rest of the day when workers had been sent home. This is the first mass action against what is slated to be the first tar sands mine in the United States. One banner hung from a halted backhoe read “If you build it, we will come.” Utah County Sheriffs responded, however no arrests were made.

Popular Resistance Newsletter: A Smarter, Stronger Movement

August 1, 2013 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Environment, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Guantanamo Bay, Tar Sands

As one would expect, the opponents of change have developed strategies to undermine social movements. Steve Horn reports, based on leaked documents from the private security firm StratFor, that their strategy is to divide activists into four groups: Radicals, Idealists, Realists and Opportunists. Opportunists are in the movement for themselves and can be pulled away for their own self-interest. Realists can be convinced that transformative change is not possible and settle for what is possible. Idealists can be convinced they have the facts wrong and pulled to the Realist camp. And finally, Radicals who see a corrupt system as corrupt that requires transformation. They work to isolate and discredit this last group. Using false charges to assassinate their character is a common tactic. They divide and weaken movements to protect the status quo.

Grassroots Anti-Pipeline Groups And Idle No More Say, “Enbridge No More!”

July 27, 2013 Vanessa Gray and Clayton Thomas-Muller, www.idlenomore.ca Resist! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

Clayton Thomas Muller, National Campaigner for Idle No More’s Sovereignty Summer (#SovSummer) campaign, says that, “a movement is rising up from coast to coast to coast against the Canadian Tar Sands and will continue to grow incrementally until we take back our democracy from the hands of corporations like Enbridge who would see all our streets, rivers, lakes and coastal areas destroyed by tar sands pipeline spills.” Thomas-Muller continues, “We will not stop until the six core demands of Idle No More & Defenders of the Land’s campaign, #SovSummer, including the right of communities to say NO are respected by the Harper Government.”

Alberta Tar Sands Site Leaking For 9 Weeks, Company Baffled

July 27, 2013 Michael Ricciardi, www.planetsave.com Educate! Environment, Tar Sands

Unlike more conventional (and damaging) tar sands mining operations, this one uses a newer, more “eco-friendly” technology called cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) that forces pressurized steam deep underground to loosen the thick, bitumen “tar’ and bring it to the surface. But critics say the process generates more CO2 than other methods. Despite the “everything is under control” official company statement, the same anonymous scientist (who also leaked photos of the spill) told a Toronto Star reporter (as recently as this today): “Everybody [at the company and in government] is freaking out about this. We don’t understand what happened. Nobody really understands how to stop it from leaking, or if they do they haven’t put the measures into place.”

FBI Investigating Anti-Tar Sands Activists In Seattle

July 23, 2013 Staff, www.targsandsblockade.org Strategize! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Surveillance, Tar Sands

This type of repression is no unusual event, considering the FBI routinely prioritizes environmental and animal rights activists as “terrorists”, to be disrupted, discredited or otherwise “neutralized” in the struggle for liberation. It’s important to recognize that this policy of combating dissent has historically culminated in the widespread disruption of black, feminist, anti-war and American Indian groups, campaigning non-violently for justice in their respective communities, with the agency deploying tactics including the monitoring of phone calls, arbitrary arrest and detention, and even assassination (as observed in the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark).

State Department Doesn’t Know Keystone XL’s Exact Route

July 8, 2013 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

The State Department's decision to hand over control to the oil industry to evaluate its own environmental performance on the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has led to a colossal oversight. Neither Secretary of State John Kerry nor President Barack Obama could tell you the exact route that the pipeline would travel through countless neighborhoods, farms, waterways and scenic areas between Alberta's tar sands and oil refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. A letter from the State Department denying an information request to a California man confirms that the exact route of the Keystone XL export pipeline remains a mystery, as DeSmog recently revealed.

Exposed: American Petroleum Institute and Keystone XL

June 28, 2013 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Corporatism, Energy, Environment, Tar Sands

API Spent $22 Million Lobbying for Keystone XL; State Dept Contractor ERM an API Member In President Barack Obama's Climate Action Plan address, he stated that TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would only receive State Department approval "if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution." As it stands, that means Keystone XL - which if built to full capacity would pipe diluted bitumen, or "dilbit" from the Alberta tar sands down to Port Arthur, TX refineries for shipment to the global export market - may likely receive Obama's approval.

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