Author: sparki

San Francisco Bay Area: Climate Activists Crash JPMorgan Chase’s Corporate Challenge Race

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photo cred: Jade Northrup

cross-posted from Oil and Gas Action Network

CONTACT: Piper • 408-202-9416 • pipermcn4climate@gmail.com

BREAKING: Climate Activists Crashed JP Morgan Corporate Challenge Race

Protesters challenged the largest funder of the fossil fuel industry.

SAN FRANCISCO —Activists at the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge foot race on September 20 in San Francisco aimed to raise public awareness and demanded that Chase stop lending billions annually to the oil and gas industry. Protesters entered the race course and raised a 30 foot banner reading “CHASE Stop Funding Fossil Fuels” in front of the finish line. Activists on kayaks with banners off the 3rd street bridge, a large “Chase Bank” facade set up along the course with a pipeline spilling black water “oil” out the front, banners along the race course, and street theater characters all sent the message to participants that Chase must end all investment in fossil fuels.

The action included an art gallery where photojournalist and Paradise resident Allen Myers, displayed his photos of friends and family standing in the ashes of their homes. Myers said, “I’ve watched the climate change in my lifetime. We know climate change played a role in the Camp fire. These photos show the face of the climate crisis and that it is here, right now in California, and the companies funding this crisis have got to be stopped.”

“Letters and other polite requests have not worked,” noted Alec Connon of Stop the Money Pipeline, a coalition of more than 230 organizations. “We feel it is vital to make life uncomfortable for JP Morgan Chase at public events in order to stop their funding of the climate chaos that is rapidly becoming a disaster for us all.”

JP Morgan Chase is the world’s largest fossil fuel banker. In the six years

photo cred: Peg Hunter

after the Paris Agreement was adopted in late 2015, Chase provided nearly $382 billion to fossil fuel corporations that are building coal mines, oil pipelines and fracked gas terminals ? that’s 36% more than any other bank in the world.

“We’re part of a global movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground. People power is fighting to keep money out of Big Oil,” said Leah Redwood, an organizer with Extinction Rebellion San Francisco Bay Area. “We are seeing the impact of the Climate Emergency – floods, heat waves, wildfires, sea level rise – every day. Cutting the supply of money to the fossil fuel industry will cut off the oxygen that is fueling this global disaster and will give us all a fighting chance.”

Participating activist organizations include:

  • 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations
  • 350 Bay Area
  • 350 Seattle
  • Diablo Rising Tide
  • Direct Action Everywhere
  • Extinction Rebellion SF Bay Area
  • Oil and Gas Action Network
  • Regenerating Paradise
  • Rich City Kayaks
  • Silicon Valley Climate Action Now
  • Stop the Money Pipeline
  • Sunrise Bay Area
  • Third Act Sacramento

#JPMCC #ChaseClimateChallenge

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Germany: Arrests as climate protests disrupt coal power plant, Berlin traffic

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The protesters said they were “taking the end of coal power into their own hands” as German plans to wind down coal usage are at least partially derailed by the war in Ukraine

cross-posted from DW.com

Police have cleared activists from a coal power plant and the rail lines leading to it, detaining several people. The protest impacted power output. Meanwhile, in Berlin, another group blocked busy intersections.

Police in eastern Germany cleared climate protesters from the site of a coal power plant on Monday after the operator said their actions had forced a reduction in output.

Demonstrators targeted both coal storage areas at the power plant and the rail lines used to transport fuel to the power station in Jänschwalde, near Cottbus.

The group, whose “Unfreiwillige Feuerwehr” name roughly translates as “unwilling fire fighters,” said that roughly 40 of its members were on site.

“We are taking the coal power exit into our own hands here, today,” the group said.

The state interior minister spoke of an act of sabotage, while police said the case clearly involved criminal activity.

Partial reduction in output caused, no power outages

According to a spokesman for the Leag energy company, Thoralf Schirmer, activists disrupted both a coal storage facility on site and rail lines feeding the plant.

Schirmer called the activities an “attack on the security of [electricity] supply.”

He said that the disruptions forced the lignite (or brown coal) power plant to run at roughly half capacity temporarily, but that normal service was resumed later on Monday. The reduced output did not lead to power outages.

Police described efforts to clear the site as time-consuming, saying it was difficult to remove or detach the protesters from train tracks or other pieces of equipment.

Police did not comment on the number of people involved but a spokesman did tell German news agency dpa, “what’s clear is that this is a criminal case.”

“Fossil free future: scrap coal, gas, and nuclear power plants,” the sign partly written in German reads in full

Ukraine throws German coal and nuclear shutdown plans into question

Germany’s plans to transition away from both nuclear power and coal were already set prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the conflict is putting pressure on plans to shut down the last nuclear reactor at the end of 2022 and the last coal power plant in 2038.

The Jänschwalde coal plant, for instance, may be firing up two more block units in a few days that had until recently been kept as an emergency reserve. This decision is still pending approval from the state environmental agency, however, following a challenge to the move to reactivate blocks E and F at the site.

Two of the country’s last three remaining nuclear plants also look set for at least a few more months in service than previously planned, if and when government and the plants’ operators can agree on a new timetable.

The issue is also causing tension in the coalition government, which incorporates the environmentalist Greens, the center-left Social Democrats (with a longstanding history opposing nuclear power but also with close historic ties to miners’ trade unions), and the business-focused Free Democrats (FDP), which is urging its two more senior partners to waive their concerns in the face of high prices for Russian gas.

On Monday, Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the FDP said German coal and nuclear plant operators needed “clear security for planning” at least until 2024.

“We must get to the roots of the problem,” Lindner said. “We need these power plants in the European electricity mix.”

Berlin activists block major roads

Meanwhile, in the capital Berlin, police mobilized to halt a separate protest organized by the “Extinction Rebellion” group.

People gathered at three major choke points in the city center, with the main group erecting a pink mock drilling platform outside the Federal Environment Ministry building at Potsdamer Platz.

They also congregated at two junctions off the Unter den Linden street, one adjoining Charlottenstraße and the other linking up with Friedrichstraße.  According to the organizers, 250 people appeared at the Charlottenstraße intersection alone.

Berlin’s police said they deployed around 450 officers to deal with the demonstrators. This was difficult because several of them had glued themselves to the road or pavement, they said.

Extinction Rebellion complained that police checks and searches had impeded them. It also said it was planning further activity in Berlin on Tuesday.

msh/wd (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Rest in Power, Herb Goodwin!

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cross-posted from Wild Idaho Rising Tide

REST IN POWER, HERB GOODWIN! As we learned from a Monday message, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) lost a dear friend and one of our strongest, most supportive, core activists on Saturday, September 17: Herb Goodwin. He provided crucial research of fossil fuels industry corporations and often traveled with his partner Kathy Leathers 400 miles, plus many more monitoring and protesting miles, to WIRT’s north Idaho, western Montana, and eastern Washington actions against tar sands mining and refining megaloads and coal, oil, and tar sands trains and railroad infrastructure expansions. He also participated and was arrested a few times as a member of Occupy Bellingham in Washington, one of the Bellingham 6 who blockaded a coal train in December 2011, a Standing Rock Tribe accomplice against the Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota, who protested missing and murdered indigenous people in November 2016, and a kayaktivist who demonstrated against massive, Shell Oil, Arctic drilling and support vessels in Bellingham and Seattle, Washington. Even after several serious health conditions arose, he continued to fight the fossil fuels extraction and transportation projects that we all must reject, for the sake of a livable planet and next generations ravaged by polluted climate chaos.
PLEASE RESIST! Too few of your vigilant, valiant, but criminalized elders, peers, and youth struggle to uphold opposition to increasingly corrupt, resource-greedy, rights-violating corporations and the governments they dominate. PARTICIPATE in Panhandle Paddle railroad resistance talks, direct action training workshops, and kayaktivist activities this Thursday through Sunday, September 22 to 25, where we will honor Herb, who journeyed from the Washington westside to join three of six previous paddles. And/or attend a memorial for Herb in Bellingham, share your condolences with his partner Kathy Leathers, and get involved with another three events that WIRT with host by October 8. We are sorry for Herb’s loss and Kathy’s sorrow, during and after a few years of his illness, as we send our strongest love and prayers for his best passage and all of our transitions without him. (draft) ~Helen

Wild Idaho Rising Tide:September 22-25 Seventh Panhandle Paddle

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cross-posted from Wild Idaho Rising Tide

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 18, 2022

 

Media contact:

Helen Yost, Wild Idaho Rising Tide

wild.idaho.rising.tide@gmail.com, 208-301-8039

 

September 22-25 Seventh Panhandle Paddle

Annual Event Offers Rail Bridge Talk, Action Training, & Lake Flotilla

Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allied climate activists invite Northwest residents to participate in annual Seventh Panhandle Paddle activities in Sandpoint, Idaho, on Thursday through Sunday, September 22 to 25.  Grassroots organizers provide opportunities to discuss, train for, and participate in community resistance to the environmental pollution and public health and safety risks and impacts of regional coal, oil, tar sands, and hazardous materials trains, terminals, derailments, and rail bridge and track expansions across Lake Pend Oreille, Sand Creek, and downtown Sandpoint.  Ongoing, increasing fossil fuels railroad infrastructure and transportation recklessly jeopardize and degrade water, air, lands, lives, and global climate, evident in seven north Idaho and western Montana derailments and deadly collisions within 50 miles of Sandpoint, during 2017 through 2020.  These incidents include diesel locomotive, grain, and coal train wrecks beside and into the Clark Fork and Kootenai rivers and Lake Pend Oreille, less than one year after and before the disastrous oil train spills and fires in the Columbia River Gorge town of Mosier, Oregon, and the northwest Washington community of Custer.  For further background and event descriptions, see the attached flyer and linked WIRT website and facebook pages, and contact WIRT with questions and suggestions.

#No2ndBridge Talk

Thursday, September 22, 6 to 8 pm

Gardenia Center, 400 Church Street, Sandpoint

At this informal presentation and public discussion, participants can exchange issue information and brainstorm creative opposition and regulatory and legal recourse to the myriad significant impacts of Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway’s Sandpoint Junction Connector project and fossil fuels pipeline-on-rails across the Panhandle and almost one mile over Idaho’s largest, deepest lake, Pend Oreille.  Bring ideas about campaign organizing and railroad monitoring and protesting, and gather for conversations, snacks, and beverages.

 

Direct Action Training

Saturday, September 24, 2 to 5 pm

Gardenia Center, 400 Church Street, Sandpoint

Local and West Coast trainers will offer their expertise through interactive presentation and practice workshops on topics such as knowing your rights, strategizing, affinity group dynamics, target selection, scouting, action design and roles, media and police interactions, de-escalation, security, safety, self-defense, and jail solidarity.  RSVP to request particular, adapted sessions, and join WIRT and guests, to learn, share, and strengthen frontline skills, tactics, and insights.

 

Seventh Panhandle Paddle

Sunday, September 25, 10 am to 12 pm

City Beach & Dog Beach Parks, Sandpoint

Come to the south boat ramp at City Beach, for a flotilla demonstration around current and under-construction Sand Creek and Lake Pend Oreille railroad bridges, launching after participants arrive by land and water at 10 am.  Around 11 am, another rally will converge after paddlers reach Dog Beach Park, before their return voyage to City Beach.  Bring friends, family, kayaks, canoes, and other manual watercraft, and distantly visible banners and signs.  Respond to WIRT to reserve carpool spots, to help rent kayaks or paddleboards from downtown businesses, and to support and assist these free, collective events, as a volunteer and/or contributor.

 

Seventh Panhandle Paddle

https://wildidahorisingtide.org/2022/09/18/seventh-panhandle-paddle

https://www.facebook.com/events/1131165944447142