Leonardo Cerda is an Ecuadorian youth climate, energy and sustainability activist studying International Relations and Political Sciences at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador.  He’s also starting up organizing Marea Creciente / Rising Tide and a Climate Camp there!

Leo’s been involved in resistance movements against the oil industry in Ecuador since he was fourteen years old. He and others in his community starting doing workshops around the Amazon at that time, in different indigenous villages, discussing the causes and the future consequences of the oil industry, it’s relationship to climate change and the many other devastating consequences to people and the environment. Continue Reading »

Nothing could sway the Dominion 11 from their mission–not the cops and certainly not the prospect of free food. Early on the morning of Sept. 15, activists from a range of environmental groups formed a human barrier to block access to a coal plant being built by Dominion in rural Wise County, Virginia. As acts of civil disobedience go, this wasn’t exactly Bloody Sunday. The police took a hands-off approach and even offered to buy the protesters breakfast if they unchained themselves. (They declined.) But the consequences were far from trivial. The activists who had formed the barrier to the construction site were arrested and charged with trespassing, and they eventually paid $400 each in fines. That’s nothing, of course, compared with the punishment the Dominion plant will inflict on the environment. If completed, the plant will emit 5.3 million tons of CO2 a year into the atmosphere, roughly the equivalent of putting a million more cars on the road.

The future of coal will dictate the future of the climate. Plants in the U.S. that burn this low-cost, high-carbon fuel account for about 40% of the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions, not to mention other air pollutants. Right now there are about 600 coal power plants in the U.S., and an additional 110 are in various stages of development. Without ways to capture the carbon burned in coal and sequester it underground, new plants all but guarantee billions of tons of future carbon emissions and essentially negate efforts to reduce global warming. “Business as usual can’t continue as long as coal is destroying the climate,” says Hannah Morgan, 20, one of the Dominion 11. “We are not going to back down.” Continue Reading »

Nov.4, 2008-Montpelier, VT

Citizens Demand Certificate of “No-Good” for Vermont Yankee!

Demanding the closure of Vermont Yankee, Green Mountain Earth First!, RTNA, and other citizens challenged the Vermont Public Service Board at their state office in Montpelier-Vermont’s capital-Monday morning. Dressed as elves and Santa Claus, the group entered the offfice and insisted that the Public Service Board (PSB) revoke Entergy Vermont Yankee’s Certificate of the Public Good and instead sign a large cardboard Certificate of the “Public Bad.” “We’ve talked with Santa Claus and clearly Entergy Nuclear has been up to no good,” said one of the elves entering the office. The group held photographs of Vermont Yankee’s 2007 cooling tower collapse and 2004 transformer fire as well as a giant banner reading ‘Do the Public a Service: Closer Vermont Yankee!’ The suddenly, an unforecasted “snowstorm” enshrouded the entire office-bringing an early (nuclear) winter to the annoyed PSB office personnel.

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As the sun fell on Halloween, the undead victims of mountain top removal coal mining rose up and descend upon Bank of Americas and Citibanks in Boston. It is no coincidence that while Bank of America and Citibank make a killing on coal, coal is killing Appalachian communities that fall prey to dirty energy companies whose interests in profiting from strip mining outweigh the value of lives and mountain communities. In 2006, Bank of America invested twice as much in dirty energy as it did on clean energy projects. In 2006, Citi’s investments in coal were 200 times greater than their investments in clean energy, making them the number one financier of coal worldwide.

Photos available here.
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Northwest Caravan To Support The Struggle For Survival On The Front Lines Of Resistance at Big Mountain, Black Mesa, AZ. 2008

Indigenous nations are disproportionately targeted by fossil fuel extraction & environmental devastation and Black Mesa is no exception. At this moment Peabody Coal Co. is planning to seize tribal lands and massively expand dirty coal strip-mining operations. In 30 years of controversial operation, Peabody’s Black Mesa Mine has been the source of an estimated 325 million tons of CO2 that have been discharged into the atmosphere.* If expansion plans are permitted, it would exacerbate already devastating environmental and cultural impacts on local communities and significantly add fuel to the fire of the current climate chaos we face globally. Coal from the Black Mesa mine could contribute an additional 290 million tons of CO2 to the global warming crisis!*

Institutional racism has fueled neglect and abandonment of public needs such as water, maintenance of roads, health care, and schools. Daily life for Big Mountain residents hasn’t changed too much over the years, except that more of them have become elderly and now struggle with daily chores. Due to lack of local job opportunities and federal strangulation on Indian self-sufficiency, extended families are forced to live many miles away to earn incomes and have all the social amenities which include choices in mandatory American education. It is increasingly difficult for families to come back to visit their relatives in these remote areas due to the unmaintained roads and the rising cost of transportation. Continue Reading »

A coalition of Klamath River Indian tribes, fishermen, conservationists and local supporters (including Cascadia Rising Tide) ramped up their campaign to remove four fish-killing dams on the river today when they held a spirited protest in front of PacifiCorp’s headquarters in Portland.

The “Day of Action Against PacifiCorp” started off at 8:30 a.m. on September 18th when local activists hung a banner proclaiming “Warren Buffett Kills Salmon, Jobs and Communities” over Interstate-84 in solidarity with the Tribes. Around 200 people marched from Holiday Park in Portland at noon to converge in front of PacifiCorp for a press conference at 1 p.m.

After the conference, 70 people occupied the area in front of the headquarters, effectively shutting down the front entrance to PacifiCorp as company staff locked the doors. Continue Reading »

Pictures here
Video coming soon!

On October 7, just past noon, four activists chained themselves to the front entrance of the Citi branch in Harvard Square, Cambridge. The action started as a protest in front of the Bank of America branch a block away before marching down the street to Citibank, where the four activists had already chained themselves to the front door, closing the bank for a period of time. Over 150 people attended the protest, while many more onlookers gathered in Harvard Square.

Continue Reading »

Members of Asheville Rising Tide traveled to Wise County to support this inspiring action organized by local Wise County residents, Earth First!ers, and anti-coal campaigners. As we listened to events in the Gulf unfold in the wake of Hurricane Ike, it seemed appropriate to be acting in solidarity with community activists at the ground zero of climate change, a new coal-fired power plant fueled by mountain top removal coal blasted out of the surrounding mountains. We hope this escalation will contribute another step toward building a mass movement against coal extraction and burning everywhere…

Monday, September 15^th

Wise County, VA-At 6:00am this morning around 30 people from across the country blocked the entrance to the construction site of Dominion Virginia’s new coal-fired power plant in Wise County, VA. Continue Reading »

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, August 13 NOON
Land Use Regulatory Commission (LURC) 18 Elkins Lane - Harlow Building  22 State
House Station Augusta, Maine 04333-0022

For More Information Contact: Logan Perkins - 207-615-5158

Hoopla for the North Woods
Maine Earth First! says No More Games
Bold Protest Urges LURC to Reject Massive Plum Creek Development Plan

Augusta, ME - In a bold stunt today, a dozen people affiliated with  Maine Earth First!, protested at the LURC office in Augusta. One woman  suspended herself 35 feet in the air from a giant tripod made of wooden  poles, while others hula-hooped on the ground below her. Under the  banner “LURC: Do the right thing! No Development! Plum Creek can’t buy  ME” the concerned citizens gathered to make it clear that the only  responsible decision is for LURC to reject Plum Creek’s entire plan.  Maine Earth First! is an all-volunteer group of Maine citizens working toward the protection of all remaining wild places in Maine as sources  of biodiversity, climate stability and cultural heritage.

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From July 28 - Aug. 4th over 400 people gathered on a pesticide-free farm in Coburg, Oregon to learn, share, organize and network. Workshops and keynotes covered issues from the I-5 bridge expansion (Columbia River Crossing) to growing vegtables year-around. The week highlighted fossil fuel development projects throughout the West, and then created a space for people to learn the skills needed to fight them.

The phrase direct action has been invoked in many ways for many movements. Often, in the climate movement it is used to describe non-violent civil disobedience that directly confront and seek to physically halt fossil fuel development projects, such as lock-downs to equipment and road blockades. At this year’s West Coast Convergence for Climate Action, we spoke of direct action as not only taking action against dirty fossil fuel projects, but also taking action for community solutions and sustainability!

The week led up to a day of civil disobedience on Monday, which consisted of two major acts of disruption, street theater and rallies. It was awesome to learn about the details of proposed dirty energy projects, then hear the personal stories from impacted communities fighting them, and then finally organize and take action in the efforts to stop them. Continue Reading »

August 11 Richmond, VA Despite a massive police presence throughout the city and our major action plan derailed by law enforcement harassment, 50 activists snaked their way through Richmond today in an un-permitted march, paying visits to several climate criminals. Carrying banners reading, “No Nukes, No Coal, No Kidding” and “Social Change not Climate Change,” people marched to the headquarters of Massey Energy, Dominion, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, and Bank of America.

At Massey Energy, a notorious coal company involved in mountaintop removal coal mining, activists surrounded the entrance and yelled, “Hands off our mountains!.” The group then moved on to the Department of Environmental Quality which recently rubber stamped Dominion’s dirty coal plant in Wise County, VA. Next the group brought the party to Dominion, who is building the aforementioned coal plant as well as proposing a new nuke plant in Louisa County, VA. Chanting “No coal, no nukes, we won’t stop until you do!” the activists attempted to take over Dominion’s plaza but were repelled by police on horses. In a show of interspecies solidarity one horse bucked a cop off its back.

To wrap things up for the day, the crowd moved on to the the towering Bank of America building, one of the largest funders of the coal industry. Continue Reading »

August 7 Louisa, VA Activists from the Southeast Convergence for Climate Action occupied the welcome center for Dominion’s North Anna nuclear power plant today. The action was taken to protest Dominion’s plans to build two new nuclear reactors and to call out nuclear power for the false solution that it is to the climate crisis. “We are here to serve notice on the so-called ‘nuclear renaissance’ that the anti-nuclear movement is alive and well,” said Glenn Carroll, coordinator of Nuclear Watch South.

In all 25 people occupied the visitors center for 2 hours until police came in to remove them. The protestors wore shirts that read “Nukes not Welcome” and chanted and sang. “We chose to take non-violent direct action because Dominion and the federal government have completely failed to address the climate crisis,” said Paxus Calta who lives twenty miles from the plant. The protesters also gave their own version of a tour for visitors revealing the true nature of the nuclear industry. In all 6 people were arrested for refusing to leave the building and were escorted out in handcuffs to the cheers of their friends. Continue Reading »

Asheville, NC Today Asheville Rising Tide’s billionaire bloc descended on Bank of America’s regional headquarters to demand that BoA continue to invest their money in coal. The Billionaires for Coal carried signs reading “More Profit, Less Mountains” and sipped on dirty (coal) martinis to applaud BoA for its funding of mountaintop removal coal mining as well as the new generation of dirty coal plants. The Asheville Police Department did an excellent job of blocking access to the bank entrance and the ATM surely scaring off a number of bank customers.

Two days before, activists with Croatan Earth First! visited three Bank of America branches in Raleigh and Chapel Hill. The activist entered the banks raising a ruckus and handing out fliers to customers until being forced to leave. The motley crew of billionaires then proceeded to demonstrate outside and informing the public of BoA’s dirty deeds. A few weeks before several activists were detained by police in Charlotte, NC (BoA’s hometown) for hanging anti-coal poster’s in the neighborhoods of several BoA executives homes. After intensive interrogation, they were let go without charge (remember kids, never talk to cops).

Continue Reading »

Please help offset bail costs by donating! Money will be collected care of the Earth First! Journal.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Several people were arrested late Monday morning (July 7 while protesting plans for a proposed coal-fired plant in southeast Ohio.

Police were forced to subdue protestors after they entered the headquarters of American Municipal Power, located on Airport Drive in east Columbus, 10TV News reported.

Dozens of members with the group, Earth First, were at the headquarters protesting plans to build a new power plant in Meigs County.

According to police, five demonstrators entered the building and chained themselves up. Officers used Mace when the demonstrators refused to leave, 10TV News reported.

Eight people were arrested during the demonstration, police said.

More info:
http://cbusimc.org/node/13900

Channel 10 News

The controversy over the I-5 expansion project known as the Columbia River Crossing took a theatrical turn on Wednesday, as politically charged street performance took center stage outside a packed city hall. Meeting attendees were greeted with a fake check point just past an area marked off by “Global Warming Crime Scene” tape.

Decked out in a Men-in-Black style uniform marked with the insignia of the “Oil Enforcement Agency”, an actress known as Agent Burns was busily preparing a ticket for a bemused member of the Portland Business Alliance on his way to the meeting. “This is your final warning sir, if you’re intent on testifying in favor of the bridge, we’re going to have to write you up for abuse of a foreign fossil fuel,” chided the agent.

[Hi-resolution images after the jump!]

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On the surface, broad-based solutions to global warming appear to be emerging in Congress. But with even a meager scrubbing of the surface, Senators Lieberman and Warner’s “Climate Security Act” (S. 2191) - which is scheduled to be debated on the Senate floor in June - turns out to be perhaps the greatest greenwash of our generation.

Everyone who cares about the climate and a just energy future would do well to take a good, hard look at the Lieberman-Warner (L-W) bill. It could frame the climate debate in the US for a generation. Continue Reading »

May 25, 2008 - Charlotte, NC Today, activists with Asheville Rising Tide broke ground on a new 800 Mw clean energy power plant in Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers front yard. The power plant will tap into a previously unexplored energy source known as hot air which has been found in large concentrations at Roger’s residence, 330 Eastover Rd, Charlotte, NC. “The hot air emitting from Jim Rogers mouth has been around for quite some time, but the last couple of years has seen an exponential growth of this untapped energy source as Rogers parades around the country calling for greenhouse gas reductions while building the dirty Cliffside coal plant. This was simply an opportunity we couldn’t pass up,” said Jill Rockingham, chief engineer for the project. Continue Reading »

During the Fall and Winter of 2007-08, RTNA worked extensively with Native Forest Network-Gulf of Maine (NFN) and other groups in Maine to stop Plum Creek Timber and Real Estate’s proposed massive development of the Moosehead Lake Region in northern Maine’s North Woods. Part of the Great North Woods of eastern North America-this particular region is the largest undeveloped wildland in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River; this region is home to such species such as the Canada lynx, black bear, wolves, moose, loon, and many other native species. This region has also for many generations supported a traditional local economy that included subsistence hunting & fishing, primitive recreation, and eco-tourism. Plum Creek plans to impose luxury vacation resorts, golf courses, gated communities, marinas, and more-along with significant introduction and expansion of roads and other invasive infrastructure.

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[from the Indigenous Environmental Network and others]

New York City, NY - Indigenous Peoples attending the Permanent Forum are outraged that their rejection of the carbon market has been ignored in the final report of the 7th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII). The final report of the PFII hails World Bank funded carbon trading, like the Clean Development Mechanism, as “good examples” of partnership despite the human rights violations and environmental destruction they have caused.

“Indigenous Peoples attending the 7th session of the Permanent Forum are profoundly concerned that our key recommendations on climate change are not being taken into account by the Permanent Forum. This Permanent Forum was created precisely to recognize, promote, and support the rights of Indigenous Peoples,” says Florina Lopez, Coordinator of the Indigenous Women’s Biodiversity Network of Abya Yala. Continue Reading »

April 23 Charlotte, NC Today activists with Asheville Rising Tide, Rainforest Action Network, and Croatan Earth First! hit the streets of Charlotte, NC to protest Bank of America’s annual shareholders meeting. Bank of America has seen an escalating level of protest in the past year for its funding of the coal industry. Bank of America has provided billions of dollars in loans to companies including Massey Energy, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources which are responsible for the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in southern Appalachia. In addition Bank of America is funding a number of new coal plants including Duke Energy’s Cliffside power plant in Western North Carolina. Continue Reading »

Thomas Friedman, the author and NY Times columnist, was invited to Brown University to give a keynote speech on Earth Day, before a packed auditorium. His talk, titled “Green is the new Red White and Blue” was about how corporate environmentalism (based on putting a price on the atmosphere, and investing in biofuels and techno-fixes) can restore America to its “natural place in the global order.” Luckily, this outrageous neoliberal capitalist propaganda was interrupted with a surprise visit from the Greenwash Guerrillas. After splattering him with two green cream pies, leaflets were thrown to the crowd, stating:

Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face…

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The photos are ordered from east to west around the world (New Zealand is 1st, U$A last)…
60 actions are featured here: if you have a photo from an action that is missing email it to fossilfools–AT–RisingTideNorthAmerica–DOT–org. View this post to see the slideshow!

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Boston, MA – Copley Square, April 1, 2008. April Fools! As of 9:00AM, in conjunction with a downtown rally, four activists have locked themselves to the front entrance of the Bank of America branch in Copley Square. They are protesting the bank’s funding of coal and energy companies who are among the worst contributors to climate change, and directly responsible for innumerable human rights abuses in communities where coal is extracted and burned.

More photos and updates available at the Fossil Fools Day website

Please support legal costs for this action!

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At 6:30 this morning, North Carolina residents locked themselves to bulldozers to stop the construction of Duke Energy’s massive Cliffside coal-fired power plant being built 50 miles west of Charlotte, NC. “In the face of catastrophic climate change, building a new coal plant is tantamount to signing a death sentence for our generation,” said local farmer Matt Wallace, while locked to a bulldozer. The concerned citizens also roped off the construction site with “Global Warming Crime Scene” tape and held banners that read “Coal Fuels Climate Change” and “Social Change, not Climate Change.”

We’re actively looking for donations to get people out of jail!

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Early Monday morning dozens of concerned community members from Palm Beach County and all over the nation put their bodies on the line to halt construction of FPL’s West County Energy Center (WCEC), demanding energy efficiency, truly clean, renewable energy and a moratorium on development in south Florida. Everglades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a proposed massive 3800 MW gas-fired power plant that would emit 12 million tons of CO2, a leading greenhouse gas, every year. The plant is currently under construction despite ongoing legal challenges to the plant’s needed permits and certification, which have been spearheaded by the local Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition.

A dozen activists locked themselves together through metal pipes as 200 supporters rallied around them. The blockade stopped work on the construction site for six hours before a total of 27 people were arrested. Continue Reading »

[The Beehive Collective is a political art and design collective and a local Rising Tide contact - they are preparing to launch a major new "graphic campaign" focused on Mountain Top Removal coal mining in collaboration with others in Rising Tide.]

In anticipation of our most exciting and busy year to date, featuring the launch of two new graphics campaigns, our swarm of eleven is in need of five more workers. We are currently seeking a few passionate and committed organizers, educators, and artists to join us full-time in Maine, at satellite Hive locations, and on the road, beginning as soon as possible.

Please pass this note on to others who might be interested! Continue Reading »

This Spring, two womyn from the Portland Animal Defense League, Rising Tide North America and Stumptown Earth First! will be on tour up and down the west coast with an interactive and engaging presentation. We’ll be offering a two hour presentation on radical eco-feminism and environmental ethics. Eco-feminism is the social movement that regards the oppression of women and nature as interconnected. It is one of the few movements and analyses that actually connects two movements. Radical ecofeminist theorists have extended their analyses to consider the interconnections between sexism, the domination of nature (including animals), and also racism and social inequalities. Consequently it is now better understood as a movement working against the interconnected oppressions of gender, race, class and nature. Continue Reading »

Cascadia Rising Tide joined forces with Stumptown Earth First! to hold an action and rally at the downtown Portland office of NW Natural (local gas utility), for their involvement in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) related pipelines, which threaten to clear-cut strips of forest throughout Oregon for new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Piling dozens of trees on NW Natural’s downtown office entryway, activists with Stumptown Earth First! and Cascadia Rising Tide, sent a message to the LNG-invested gas company: “There’s nothing Green about Clear-cuts, No new pipelines”. Continue Reading »

Read about Rising Tide North America’s older actions, activities, and reports…