MEDIA RELEASE, May 14, 2012
Canadian NGOs and labour unions have sent an amicus curiae submission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the eve of a second hearing tomorrow into Japan´s and the European Union´s joint attack on the Ontario Green Energy Act. The groups address Canada´s failure to properly defend Ontario´s actions and call upon the WTO to respect the priority of Canada´s international climate change obligations.
"These are the first international trade disputes which create the potential for conflict between a nation´s commitments under the WTO and its obligations under the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. It raises fundamental questions about whether the goals of trade liberalization can be reconciled with ecological imperatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and if not, which are to prevail," says the joint amicus curiae submission from Blue Green Canada,...
Two dozen rogue "delegates" disrupted the corporate-sponsored
welcome gala for the high-stakes Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
trade negotiations yesterday with a fake award ceremony and "mic
check." Other activists, meanwhile, replaced hundreds of rolls of
toilet paper (TP) throughout the conference venue with more
informative versions, and projected a message on the venue's facade.
The first action began when a smartly-dressed man approached the
podium immediately after the gala's keynote speech by Ron Kirk, U.S. Trade
Representative and former mayor of Dallas. The man (local puppeteer David
Goodwin) introduced himself as "Git Haversall," president of the "Texas
Corporate Power Partnership," and announced he was giving Kirk and other
U.S. trade negotiators the "2012 Corporate Power Tool Award," which
"Haversall's"...
James Hansen. Dir. of NASA Goddard Institute for Space studies, urges President Obama to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground. He says If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate and civilization would be at risk..
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-
climate.html?_r=2
Game Over for the Climate
Op-Ed Contributor
Game Over for the Climate
By JAMES HANSEN
Published: May 9, 2012
GLOBAL warming isn´t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so
troubled to read a recent interview with...
Posted: 03 May 2012 01:53 PM PDT. Here is the text of the letter:
Dear President Obama,
We write in strong support of Buy American procurement policies, including the various federal programs that have been in place since the enactment of the Buy American Act in 1933 and passage by many states of similar preference policies. We are concerned about proposals we understand are under consideration in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement negotiations that could significantly limit Buy American provisions and as a result adversely impact American jobs, workers, and manufacturers.
Under the proposed TPP framework, individual states and the federal government would be obligated to bring existing and future domestic policies into compliance with norms set forth in 26 proposed TPP chapters, including one covering government procurement policy. Failure to conform our domestic policies to these terms would subject the United...
The federal government’s war on nature and democracy means “Silence is no longer an option” for Canadians. So I’m urging you to join with Sierra Club Canada and the country’s leading environmental organizations in a national campaign to force the government to restore the environmental protection and democratic participation. The campaign aims to force the Harper government to retreat and restore the environmental protection and democratic participation it recently gutted.
We’re calling the campaign “Black Out Speak Out” (or using the Twitter Hashtag #BlackOutSpeakOut). On June 4th the websites of Sierra Club Canada, CPAWS, David Suzuki Foundation, Ecojustice, Equiterre, Environmental Defense, Greenpeace, Nature Canada, Pembina, West Coast Environmental Law and WWF Canada will be blacked out to protest disastrous changes to environmental laws...
This week Federal Environment Minister Peter Kent has made repeated allegations that environmental groups are “laundering money”. This is a serious charge because according to the federal government’s own website: Money laundering is the process used to disguise the source of money or assets derived from criminal activity.
This is beyond anything in my experience and is absolutely irresponsible. A cabinet minister is going around spouting serious allegations without proof and the media is repeating them without doing anything to investigate the validity of his statements.
This is McCarthyism. Period. Back in the late 40s and early 50s Senator Joe McCarthy made a career out of unfounded...
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - Slowly but surely the photos from International Stop the Tar Sands Day 2012 are creeping in. Since I had about a 10 hour head start on most ISTSDay events I had time to write this article about ISTSDay in Melbourne. The article has been published on line in DEMOTIX:
http://www.demotix.com/news/1194823/connecting-dots-climate-change-melbo...
The full text of the article is below. More photos of us and our 2 meter tall climate dot are in the DEMOTIX article or on facebook. I will have more May 5th tales for you in the coming days.
Enjoy!
Derek
MELBOURNE - 05/05/2012
Concerned...
This post is dedicated to the organizers of Intenational Stop the Tar Sands Day 2012. This year was all about you.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – The last four months have been a blur. I cannot recall a build up to ISTSDay that I remember so little of (no pun intended) as this year's. Obviously, I remember the first year's build up because well, it was the first time. With most things in life you never forget the first time. Moments from ISTSDay 2011 stick out quite clearly especially as I watched with awe and wonder as ISTSDay grew fivefold from nine events in 2010 to fifty in 2011. Here we are in 2012, just a day away from one of the biggest international days of action in human history (largely due to 350.org, but we played a role too) and I have no idea how we got here.
Ok, that is not entirely true. As fast as things developed this year, I do have a little more than an inkling how we got...
In a short article entitled “Earth Day and Tar Sands”, published by Common Dreams April 19th http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/19-8 ] Dale Wiehoff, VP of Communications and IP for the IATP [Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy], makes the link between the on-going exploitation of the tar sands and trade policy especially NAFTA's Chapter 11, investor state, and Ch 6, the Proportionality Clause.
But first he relates Earth Day to the Tar Sands by noting that a growing number of environmental concerns not the least of which was a major oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel led to Earth Day and then goes on to remind us that none of those earlier offshore disasters like Santa Barbara or Exxon Valdez caused anywhere near the environmental devastation being wreaked by the tar sands especially in relation to...