Category Archives: Environmental activism

Movement against Georgia’s ‘Cop City’ plans occupation and ‘week of action’

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‘Block Cop City’ plans non-violent march onto site of police center and a week of panels and screenings aimed at Black audiences

The movement against the police and fire department training center known as “Cop City” is planning two events for the coming weeks in and near Atlanta, Georgia – including a first-ever, non-violent protest march onto the project’s construction site.

The action, planned for 13 November and aimed at occupying the Cop City site for a day, could draw a thousand or more people from across the county. This would make it the largest protest to date at the location. The other event is a Black-led “week of action” the week before, aimed at Black audiences.

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Fossil fuel firms spent millions on US lawmakers who sponsored anti-protest bills

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About 60% of oil and gas operations protected from protest due to money spent on lobbying, says Greenpeace USA report

Fossil fuel companies have spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign donations to state lawmakers who sponsored anti-protest laws – which now shield about 60% of US gas and oil operations from protest and civil disobedience, according to a new report from Greenpeace USA.

Eighteen states including Montana, Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, West Virginia and the Dakotas have enacted sweeping anti-protest laws which boost penalties for trespass near so-called critical infrastructure, that make it far riskier for communities to oppose pipelines and other fossil fuel projects that threaten their land, water and the global climate.

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Controversy over European climate activists’ criticism of Israel

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Extinction Rebellion protest at The Hague accuses Netanyahu of ‘war crimes’ and running an ‘apartheid regime’

European climate activists have staged protests and posted messages in support of Palestinians, prompting an online backlash and raising internal questions within the environmental movement.

Long-running tension in the Middle East exploded on 7 October when Hamas militants killed 1,400 people in southern Israel. Since then, Israeli strikes have killed at least 5,087 Palestinians, 2,055 of them children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.

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Worst-case scenario isn’t jail but climate breakdown, Queensland activists say as day in court arrives

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Fourteen protesters charged with disrupting state parliament to appear before Brisbane magistrate

Rob Keller, a 73-year-old retired teacher and small business operator, will arrive at Brisbane magistrates court on Monday facing the prospect of three years in prison.

But that is not what worries him most.

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Georgia refuses to release evidence from police shooting of Cop City activist

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Experts say decision not to make evidence available to family of Manuel Paez Terán or public sets ‘frightening’ precedent

The state of Georgia is refusing to release evidence tied to the police shooting and killing of an activist protesting a police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”, prompting concern from police accountability experts who say this sets a “frightening” precedent .

District attorney George Christian released a 31-page report earlier this month concluding that the 18 January shooting of Manuel Paez Terán, or “Tortuguita”, was “objectively reasonable”. Paez Terán was one of a small group of “forest defenders” camping in a wooded public park to protest Cop City, planned for a separate part of the forest south-east of Atlanta, Georgia, less than a mile away. Dozens of officers from multiple agencies raided the park; the state claims Paez Terán fired a gun first, prompting six officers to shoot the activist. The activist sustained 57 gunshot wounds and died nearly instantly.

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Demonstration in Oslo seeks removal of windfarms in Indigenous region

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Campaigners use traditional Sámi tents to block roads in Norwegian capital in protest against turbines on reindeer pastures

Hundreds of Indigenous and environmental campaigners have blocked a main thoroughfare in Oslo to demand the demolition of two windfarms that have been described by the Norwegian government as a “violation of human rights”.

The Wednesday protest traces its roots to a landmark 2021 decision by Norway’s supreme court that found 151 wind turbines in the western region of Fosen had trampled on the rights of Sámi reindeer herders by encroaching on their pastures.

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WA police condemned for ‘shocking’ demand for ABC to hand over footage of climate protesters

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Civil society groups call on broadcaster not to comply with order they say is an ‘alarming overreach’ and ‘undermines press freedom’

Civil society groups have accused Western Australia police of undermining press freedom by demanding the ABC hand over Four Corners footage of climate protesters, and urged the broadcaster to protect its journalists’ sources.

In response to the police demand the ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, has said the broadcaster would never reveal its sources, but he did not rule out handing over the vision.

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Vietnam jails leading climate activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong for tax evasion

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Hong’s three-year sentence is the latest in a string of convictions for environmental campaigners in the country

A leading Vietnamese climate activist has been jailed for tax evasion, the latest environmentalist put behind bars by the country’s communist government.

A court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced Hoang Thi Minh Hong to three years in prison for dodging $275,000 in taxes related to her environmental campaign group Change, her lawyer, Nguyen Van Tu, said.

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Cancelling Greenpeace contradicts Tory free-speech pledge but suits anti-Labour campaign

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Cutting ties with green charity is part of culture war campaign to associate Labour with ‘lefty lawyers’ and ‘eco mobs’

• Sunak will go down in history as failing UK on climate, Greenpeace says
• ‘You have adopted a bunker mentality’: Greenpeace letter to Sunak

Scaling Rishi Sunak’s empty home to drape it in black fabric in protest at oil drilling is not the first time Greenpeace has targeted the home of senior politicians.

The environmental group surrounded David Cameron’s Cotswolds cottage in 2014 to campaign against his support for fracking, and mounted the roof of John Prescott’s home in 2005 in a demonstration against the government’s slowness on climate targets. It has also previously carried out stunts at Sunak’s North Yorkshire mansion.

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Sunak government will go down in history as failing UK on climate, Greenpeace says

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Exclusive: Joint chiefs of charity accuse ministers of pursuing culture wars as extreme weather becomes the norm

• ‘You have adopted a bunker mentality’: letter to Sunak
• Cancelling Greenpeace contradicts Tory free-speech pledge

Rishi Sunak’s government will “go down in history” as the administration that failed the UK on the climate crisis while ministers pursued a dangerous culture war, the heads of Greenpeace have said.

The charity’s joint executive directors described government briefings against the organisation in the wake of its oil protest at the prime minister’s Yorkshire home as “really dark stuff”, which revealed a worrying trend towards exploiting environmental protests as a wedge issue.

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First asylum seekers arrive on Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset – UK politics live

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No 10 backtracks on minister’s claim 500 asylum seekers could be on barge by end of week

According to a report in the Times, Liz Truss named 16 people on her original honours list – four for peerages, and 12 people getting other honours. Two people have declined, but there are still 14 names on the list, the Times says, one person for every four days she was in office.

The Labour MP Chris Bryant says resignation honours lists should be abolished.

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‘Cop City’: civil rights groups urge US to investigate surveillance of protesters

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ACLU and NAACP among organizations condemning homeland security department over ‘domestic violent extremist’ label

Prominent civil rights and civil liberties organizations have called on the US homeland security department to investigate the agency’s intelligence-gathering on protesters against ‘Cop City’, the police and fire department training center planned for a forest south-east of Atlanta.

The organizations draw attention to the dozens of environmental protesters arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in a letter to the department director, Alejandro Mayorkas. The charges have caused outrage among many observers who accuse Georgia law enforcement of a heavy-handed crackdown on the protest movement.

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March on UK Home Office over plan to deport jailed Just Stop Oil activist

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German national Marcus Decker in prison for climbing Dartford bridge faces automatic deportation, say campaigners

Hundreds of protesters were expected to march to the Home Office on Saturday demanding deportation proceedings be called off for an environmental activist imprisoned for scaling the Dartford Crossing.

Marcus Decker is serving one of the longest sentences ever passed for a non-violent protest in British history after a Just Stop Oil demonstration in October. He is a German citizen with leave to remain in the UK, but faces automatic deportation after serving the two years and seven months sentence.

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Greta Thunberg takes part in her last school strike for climate

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As activist graduates from school, she says she will still protest on Fridays as ‘fight has only just begun’

After what began as a solo protest in Sweden five years ago and grew into a movement with millions of children across the world participating, Greta Thunberg has taken part in her last “school strike” protest as she graduates from school.

The protests, which led to many climate activist movements across Europe, the US and Australia, are known as Fridays for Future or School Strike for Climate.

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Activists take Canada’s environment minister to court in fight to save northern spotted owl

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Advocacy group says continued destruction of critical habitat leaves it no choice but to take legal action against Steven Guilbeault

Environmental groups in Canada are taking legal action against the country’s environment minister, arguing his delay in protecting old growth forest is harming the critically endangered northern spotted owl.

In February, Steven Guilbeault said he would recommend an emergency order after determining the species was facing “imminent threats” to its survival.

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The multinational companies that industrialised the Amazon rainforest

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Analysis shows handful of corporations extract tens of billions of dollars of raw materials a year – and their commitments to restoration vary greatly

A handful of global giants dominate the industrialisation of the Amazon rainforest, extracting tens of billions of dollars of raw materials every year, according to an analysis that highlights how much value is being sucked out of the region with relatively little going back in.

But even as the pace of deforestation hits record highs while standards of living in the Amazon are among the lowest in Brazil, the true scale of extraction remains unknown, with basic details about cattle ranching, logging and mining hard to establish despite efforts to ban commodities linked to its destruction.

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Tidal barrier proposal for Lincolnshire and Norfolk sets off wave of opposition

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Wildlife and environment groups condemn plan promising renewable energy for 600,000 homes

Plans for a renewable energy tidal barrier linking Norfolk and Lincolnshire have sparked fierce debate between scientists, wildlife charities and a port company CEO who is leading the project.

Entrepreneur James Sutcliffe, who has managed and advised port companies in Sierra Leone and Bangladesh, has now set his sights on the Wash, which is the sea, mudflats and salt marsh between the two counties.

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Students occupy schools and universities across Europe in climate protest

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Twenty-two institutions have been shut down as part of proposed month-long campaign

A wave of student occupations has shut down schools and universities across Europe as part of a renewed youth protest campaign against inaction on climate breakdown. Twenty-two schools and universities across the continent have been occupied as part of a proposed month-long campaign.

In Germany, universities were occupied in Wolfenbüttel, Magdeburg, Münster, Bielefeld, Regensburg, Bremen and Berlin. In Spain, students in occupation at the Autonomous University of Barcelona organised teach-outs on the climate crisis. In Belgium, 40 students occupied the University of Ghent. In the Czech Republic, about 100 students camped outside the ministry of trade and industry. In the UK occupations were under way at the universities of Leeds, Exeter and Falmouth.

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Fire and concrete: will France’s model of radical climate protest catch on?

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As campaigning hots up around the world once again, eyes have been turning to the country that is taking things further

In the UK, when climate activists want to block a road, they sit down on it. When their fellow activists in France want to do the same, they build a wall across one side, and set the other side on fire.

As Extinction Rebellion drew tens of thousands to their peaceful “Big One” protests in London last month, in the south of France 8,500 environmental protesters occupied the road from Toulouse to the town of Castres.

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German police call for crackdown on growing climate protests

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Union leader wants more preventive detention of activists across country to stop disruption

Police representatives, members of the judiciary and politicians in Germany are calling for harsher penalties for climate activists, including preventive detention and longer prison terms, in an effort to halt their disruptive protests.

This week has seen the most intense protests yet by the campaign group Letzte Generation (Last Generation), with hundreds of its members blocking scores of roads during rush hour in Berlin.

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