Secret Meeting Planned, then Cancelled, between ENGOs and Tar Sands Companies

Secret Meeting Planned, then Cancelled, between ENGOs and Tar Sands Companies

Invitees included Tzeporah Berman, World Wildlife Federation, ForestEthics

by Dru Oja Jay

April 7, 2010 // The Dominion

MONTREAL— A secret meeting between top Canadian Environmental

Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGOs) and tar sands corporations was

cancelled after word of the meeting spread beyond the initial invitees,

according to two emails leaked to The Dominion.

Billed as a "fireside chat" and an opportunity for "deeper dialogue" in a

room at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the invitation was sent by Marlo

Raynolds of the Pembina Institute on behalf of himself and Gord Lambert of

Suncor. Suncor is the fifth-largest oil company in North America, and the

Pembina institute is a high-profile advocate for sustainable energy in

Alberta. The invitation was marked "confidential."

Ten representatives each from tar sands operators and high-profile

environmental groups were invited to the "informal, beer in hand"

gathering. The David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defence Canada,

Forest Ethics, Pollution Probe and Tides Canada were among the invited

environmental groups. Merran Smith of ForestEthics was listed without

affiliation, as was Tzeporah Berman, who worked to privatize BC’s rivers

as director of PowerUp Canada, and who is slated to start work this month

as Greenpeace International’s Climate Campaigner. Among invited oil

companies were Shell, ConocoPhilips, Total and Statoil. Leading tar sands

investor Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) was also on the guestlist.

The event would be, the invitation explained, "an opportunity for a few

ENGOs and a few companies to share their thoughts on the current state of

relations and explore ideas on how a deeper dialogue might occur."

Three days later, Raynolds sent a second email, cancelling the gathering,

owing to "the level of tension" between "a subset of companies and a

subset of ENGOs." The followup email specified a legal dispute. Sources in

Albertan environmental circles suggested pressure to cancel came from

threats to expose the meeting publicly.

"I personally believe we all need to find a way to create the space and

conditions necessary for deeper and meaningful conversations to find some

solutions," wrote Raynolds, explaining the cancellation. "I do hope that

in the coming months, we can work to create those conditions."

The invitation to the secret meeting came as several of the invited groups

had signed on to an open letter to Enbridge, asking it to cancel the

Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would pipe tar sands crude to BC’s

central coast, to be put on oil tankers. The letter was published as a

full page ad in the Globe and Mail.

In 2008, the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Boreal Initiative

(financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts; see "Can Pew’s Charity be

Trusted?," November 2007) released a report proposing "conservation

offsets" as a way to mitigate the destruction of biodiversity by tar sands

operations.

According to Pembina, conservation offsets "allow resource companies to

compensate for the unavoidable impact to biodiversity from their

development projects by conserving lands of equal or greater biological

value, with the objective of having no net loss in biodiversity."

Pembina acknowledged a contribution of $44,000 from tar sands operator

Nexen for the "costs of the document."

Petr Cizek, a land use planner and long-time critic of ENGOs’ campaigns

because of their lack of transparency and accountability, said it is to be

expected that prominent environmental groups will meet in secret with oil

companies.

"Is this surprising? No. Is this blatant? Yes," Cizek said.

"The issue isn’t negotiation or compromise. I’ve done lots of both in my

time. The issue is whether the negotiations are transparent and the

organizations are democratic. Virtually none of these organizations are

democratic," he said.

Environmentalists invited to the secret meeting have come under fire by

grassroots environmental activists for their secretive, back-room approach

to negotiations with corporations in previous campaigns. Tzeporah Berman

and Merran Smith both acted as negotiators when ForestEthics and other BC

ENGOs accepted a deal that protected 20 per cent of the Great Bear

Rainforest.

Some grassroots organizations and First Nations were furious at the deal,

which settled for half the minimum protected area outlined in protocol

agreements signed by environmental groups and First Nations prior to the

negotiations. (The area protected by the Great Bear deal was later

increased to 30 per cent after First Nations’ land use plans forced

reconsideration of some of the concessions.)

Cizek said he is not bothered by the outcome of negotiations, but by the

lack of accountability and public oversight.

"My issue isn’t the fact that they protected only 30 per cent, or that

they protected the wrong 30 per cent. In some cases, maybe that is all

that you can achieve. These negotiations can be really ugly. I’ve been

there," he said.

"My issue is that they lied to and betrayed and broke a deal they had with

the smaller organizations."

In a 2009 interview published in the report Offsetting Resistance,

Valhalla Wilderness Society (one of the smaller organizations Cizek

mentioned) Director Anne Sherrod made the connection between the Great

Bear Rainforest agreement and the tar sands.

"These are greenwashing deals. I am speaking out about this because there

is evidence that the collaborative agreement industry may be moving to the

tar sands," said Sherrod.

"I want everyone to know that issues where people are dying of cancer from

serious pollution is no place for this kind of thing. Open public process

is your best friend in situations like this. Insist on it."

Dru Oja Jay is a member of the Dominion editorial collective. He is

co-author, with Macdonald Stainsby, of the report Offsetting Resistance:

The effects of foundation funding from the Great Bear Rainforest to the

Athabasca River.

ACTION ALERT! Is Greenpeace International set to become GE – Greenpeace Electric?

Greenpeace International or Greenpeace Electric???

“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”­ – Chinua Achebe ­ Nigerian Writer

First the tcktcktck scandal and now this. AT COP 15, the spokesperson for TckTckTck was Kumi Naidoo.  Kumi Naidoo is the Chair of  TckTckTck, as well as the executive director of Greenpeace International.

The recent decision by Greenpeace International to hire Tzeporah Berman to direct its global climate and energy campaign could be the most disastrous decision that Greenpeace has ever made. It is quite possible that this move may destroy the organizations reputation in such a damaging way it may never recover. The current economic system has caused us to have entered into what Dr. E.O. Wilson describes as ‘the sixth extinction’ – a phrase that many scientists are now using. We now face climate catastrophe on a dying planet already well on the pathway to a 6C temperature rise which will kill off most life. This recent appointment of Tzeporah Berman could be the greatest threat climate change justice has yet to face. Who is Tzeporah Berman anyway? Tzeporah Berman could be described as a Trojan horse for the biggest corporations on the planet. She has successfully entrenched her way into the position of bargaining away nature to the corporations, under the guise of an environmentalist. Perhaps this is a seemingly much better strategy than just having Pat Moore “ex-Greenpeace” running around supporting the corporations. The corporations have finally succeeded in placing a compromised ‘environmentalist’ into the very heart of Greenpeace – the most recognized environmental organization on the planet. The day after Tzeporah Berman announced her new Greenpeace role, she walked into an exclusive General Electric (GE) banquet (past the real environmental protesters) and delivered a speech supporting the privatization of some 600 rivers in British Columbia, Canada, for the benefit of GE and their subsidiaries and partners. So there was Greenpeace (not officially, of course, but in the public mind) endorsing the wholesale surrender of our environment to one of the most predatory corporations on the planet – GE has paid fines for illegal weapons trade fraud, money laundering, etc.

“There is nothing more dangerous than a shallow thinking compassionate person.” – Garrett Hardin

On a positive note – such a scandal may be the one that will finally expose the corporatization of compromised NGOs and the deafening silence on the reality of climate change which has been going on behind the scenes for quite some time – to which the public are mostly unaware.

Also amazing; right now, in the climate justice movement something extraordinarily important is happening.  After Copenhagen – a line is finally being drawn in the sand. True climate justice groups are now refusing to sign onto to any statement that endorses a temperature which exceeds a 1C temperature rise. As compromised NGOs are still clinging to the suicidal 1.5C – 2C temperatures, we will now finally see a clear divide. True climate justice groups verses the compromised NGOs. As well, true climate justice groups are now mobilizing to endorse a global emergency declaration on climate change. Again, those who do not sign on will be easily identified as those with vested interests.

The Tzeporah Berman specialty: Disaster Capitalism

The message behind disaster capitalism campaigning is this; climate change is “so urgent” that we have to turn the planet over to GE and other corporations to “save us.” This is all bullshit. This messaging is designed with the purpose of gaining corporate control of Earths natural assets. The question is, what has gone wrong at Greenpeace International? Is it i) lack of due-diligence, ii) lack of research ii) lack of knowledge or iv) is this the new direction of Greenpeace? Did they not speak to anyone in Canada who has dealt with Tzeporah Berman? (See extensive list of comments below including comments from Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler). With the Earth now passing several planetary boundaries and ecosystems now failing, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world – disaster capitalism is now set to explode.

General Electric

To help sell their corporate privatization of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, GE placed Tzeporah on the cover of their magazine, Reader’s Digest. General Electric, which owns one of the world’s largest media conglomerates – as well as weapons production, weapons trade, and military contracts – owns Reader’s Digest through GE Capital with partners Bank of America and JPMorgan. GE has a history of using Reader’s Digest to hype its offspring, including a health Insurance company, its astroturf organizations, and now, their well trained “environmentalist,” Tzeporah Berman. Keep in mind that General Electric plays both sides of the climate “debate”. While they support astroturf organizations – such as Tzeporah’s “Power UP Canada” to sell their private acquisition of Canadian public assets; allegedly to build “alternative power” and “reduce global warming”, they simultaneously fund the organizations that deny global warming. GE funds the American Petroleum Institute, for example, and it’s astroturf affiliates such as “Energy Citizens,” who stage “grassroots” rallies to deny climate change and defeat climate legislation in the U.S. General Electric is a member of American Petroleum Institute (API), along with Dow, Bechtel, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP America, ConocoPhillips, General Siemens, Enbridge, and so forth.

GE is also a member of United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – an organization which supports a target of 450-550 parts per million of CO2 – which is suicidal. USCA consists of corporately funded NGOs such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and these corporatized NGOs partner with the likes of Shell, The Dow Chemical Company and many more multinational corporations who continue to exploit both people and planet in the name of insatiable corporate profits. Will Greenpeace International be the next to get in bed with USCAP?

GE is a member through GE Oil & Gas Conmec and General Electric Inspection Services (both link directly to GE Energy) GE Energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and delivery from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy. GE is now moving into renewable resources such as water, wind, and solar by acquiring rights to those energy resources worldwide. In B.C. their plan is to privatize some 600 watersheds, acquire the water and energy resources, and then sell it back to the public at exorbitant prices they set with the corrupted government that they support. GE takes B.C. public and ecological assets and not even pays trinkets, but rather makes citizens pay with a liability to buy their power at a rate they’ve wrangled from Gordon Campbell and his accenture (former Arthur Anderson of the Enron cookie jar crowd) advisors. General Electric helped fund these climate change denial campaigns, while simultaneously using the urgency of global warming to make a grab for hundreds of rivers, tributaries, and watersheds in British Columbia, Canada. They’ve attached Tzeporah Berman to the deal to give it a green patina. One could argue that, Tzeporah, in essence, represents General Electric. She is now their allegedly friendly face of privatization. She stands in opposition to the people of British Columbia, the grass roots environmental organizations, the long-standing Canadian ecology groups – Greenpeace, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, BC Citizens for Public Power, Indigenous Environmental Network and others. General Electric: one of the most destructive corporations on the planet. Involved in global weapons manufacture and trade, with international criminal convictions for weapons trading fraud and money laundering, deeply institutionalized in the U.S. Defense Contract community, controlling massive media ownership – including Reader’s Digest.

Copenhagen – For some, a tiny tax outweighs massive environmental destruction

On December 29than article by Roger Annis appeared on Climate & Capitalism; Here is an excerpt;

At first glance, it seemed that the “Yes Men” had scored another comedic coup for Mother Earth. CBC Radio news reported on December 16 that on the previous day, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell was feted and presented an environmental award by many of Canada’s well-heeled “environmental groups” during the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen. Hah! Great gag, guys! And very timely. An embarrassingly large number of people and agencies in Canada and abroad have been hoodwinked by the BC government’s claims to environmental stewardship and its greenwashing propaganda. But wait, the story proves to be true and not a gag at all! Campbell actually did receive an ‘Economy Wide Carbon Pricing’ award from Tzeporah Berman of PowerUp Canada, one of ten of Canada’s best funded “environmental groups” that endorsed the award, presented at a gala recognizing “acts of climate leadership” by municipal and provincial governments across Canada. Other award endorsers are the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, ForestEthics, the Green Energy Act Alliance, the Pembina Institute, TckTckTck, and WWF Canada.

Voices of dissent

The Sierra Club did not participate in the Copenhagen award gala. Executive Director George Heyman, a former long-time president of the BC Government Employees Union, said the BC Liberals have taken a lot of actions that are “deeply contradictory” to its greenwashing propaganda. Heyman pointed out that fuel is exempt from the soon-to-be-imposed Harmonized Sales Tax, but the labour for energy efficient home retrofits is not. “They’re also providing massive subsidies to the oil and gas industry. . . and supporting a massive pipeline to move dirty tar sands oil across B.C.,” he said. Voices of concern are on the rise from the Indigenous peoples living in the coal and gas rich regions. Writing in the Vancouver Sun on December 22, Kathie Dickie, Chief of the 800-member Fort Nelson First Nation, expressed grave concern over two giant gas processing facilities being built near Fort Nelson, in northeast B.C. Chief Dickie wrote there has been no meaningful consultation with her people concerning the environmental impacts of En Cana Corporation’s Cabin Gas Plant nor a Spectra Gas plant to be located 15 kilometers away. Cabin Gas, once constructed, will be the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the province. One BC government official told the Fort Nelson First Nation that its 100-year old treaty with Canada does not guarantee clean air. “Imagine being told by a government official in 2009 that you have no say on the quality of air you or your children breathe! What parent would stand for it?” Dickie asked. The pale green groups that honored Gordon Campbell should be ashamed. His government should be condemned, not praised.

This must be stopped

There must be an international response. Please circulate this to all of your contacts concerned for the environment and climate justice. See the email addresses for Greenpeace staff below. We now stand on the cusp of the bleakest periods where we are confronted with the zero point of systemic collapse. Now is the time to be bold. No more compromise. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the corporatized NGOs who have hijacked the environmental movement. Such compromised NGO behaviour has been nothing less than an absolute detriment to the real environmental movement. The same compromised NGOs have and continue to obstruct real climate justice by keeping the public in the dark on the necessary targets we must demand to avert the climate crisis we now face. Below is one of the most truthful videos on climate change that exists today.

The Vancouver Media Coop in Canada are promoting an excellent idea of having Greenpeace members and donors contact Greenpeace expressing their disapproval. This must happen on the largest possible scale.

The Pale Green Patina; How General Electric promotes their trained “Environmentalist”

General Electric is hyping Tzeporah Berman, BC’s pale green media princess, as “The New Face of Environmentalism” while she helps them sell their private power deals in Canada. Their goal: to privatize Canadian rivers for corporate profit. Stumping for GE: Sunday, February 15, 2010: The day after announcing her new “greenpeace” role, Tzeporah marched into the private General Electric banquet with the GE executives and security guards, past the Wilderness Committee and other protesters. Inside, she delivered a stump speech supporting the corporate privatization of B.C. wilderness rivers. She is also in favour of the Canadian Tar Sands … with similar phoney-green promises.

Here is the result of Tzeporah’s brand of industrial corporate faux environmentalism;

The once pristine Toba Inlet watershed

This individual who Greenpeace International has hired has successfully betrayed her homeland and alienated the real environmental movement. She crossed an environmental picket to promote the global privatization plans of General Electric.

Pale Green Goes Hollywood

Tzeporah & Paris: savouring the taste of fame

Ego knows no bounds. A taste for power

while cutting deals with corporations and selling of the natural world.

Ms. Berman presenting a “Green” Award to the man who privatized British Columbia, sold it to General Electric and other international corporations, who built highways across farmland and called it “green;” who reversed dioxin effluent safeguards that we fought for and instituted in B.C. to protect our water; who sold off the public and natural heritage of British Columbia and opened the doors to General Electric to occupy hundreds of watersheds, devastate riparian ecosystems, and destroy forests for transmission lines to carry expensive power to mines in the north and to sprawling cities in the U.S.

It’s not easy being the pale green patina over the corporate industrialization of Canada.

Comments from BC environmentalists

Barbara Stowe:

Barbara was a teenager at the first Greenpeace meetings in 1970. Her parents, Dorothy and Irving, are founders of Greenpeace.

“Tzeporah’s support of our anti-environmental, union-busting, social-program-slashing government during an election campaign last year appalled me. She certainly knew her remarks would be used to help the powers that be get re-elected (as did occur). At the best, her actions showed a disturbing lack of judgement. Her stance on the Run of River projects deeply concerns me, and as for applauding our premier because he was sly enough to know that instituting a carbon tax would pull votes from the Greens and other left leaning parties…well, I’m very concerned that GPI would consider working with someone with her views. Given the response of environmentalists in BC to her actions last year, there is no doubt that this hire would cause serious rifts between Greenpeace and the environmental community.”

Clayoquot Sound original activists:

The founders of Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) consider Tzeporah an opportunist who used them and Clayoquot to climb the publicity ladder into cozy deals with the logging companies. Tzeporah used other people’s jail time for her own advancement. She stepped on a lot of people to get inside the corporate boardrooms that she is now so comfortable in. Here are comments from early Clayoquot activists in Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS):

Andrew Struthers in his history, The Green Shadow:

“Summer faded. The face of Mother Winter appeared in the sky over the Black Hole. Things got tense. Tzapata got into a giant queen bee struggle with Artemis, a woman who had been with the Friends since the Sulpher Pass days. Artemis got fired. When The Boss can tell you to clean out your desk, it’s just not anarchy anymore.”

Janie Jones:

Berman continued to queen bee her way through the FOCS, Greenpeace and then into her own organization ForestEthics and now, PowerUp Canada. Berman did not “lead” the blocades at Clayoquot Sound as she claims. They were organized, led and financed (one American heiress pretty well underwrote the whole thing) by the Friends of Clayoquot Sound of whom Berman became a member. Most of the original Friends, all residents of the area, had already been convicted of protesting the clearcut logging the summer before and, as part of their conditions, could not attend the daily blockades at Kennedy Lake, which is why they invited the world come there and protest for them. Ms. Berman, a former fashion student from Toronto with no direct experience or knowledge of the forest industry or the BC culture it supported, was one of over ten thousand who showed up. Because of the void at the site combined with her natural leadership qualities, the charismatic and photogenicyoung Berman rose to prominence as model/spokesperson for the daily ritual of blockading, readings of injunction and arrests.”

Betty Krawczyk: The real Clayoquot forest activist – Author of Clayoquot: The Sound Of My Heart (January 1997) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Krawczyk

Krawczyk is the woman who stood up to police, logging companies, and the courts, arrested many times at Clayoquot, Eagle Ridge Bluff, and other forest destruction sites. She did her first jail stint in 1993 at the age of 65, blockading logging trucks, and she’s still at it, today, at age 82. Here are some of her thoughts on Tzeporah’s betrayal of the B.C. environmental movement:

“Tzeporah Berman has evidently gone over to Gordon Campbell’s camp. Perhaps she is seeking a Liberal political appointment. Too bad. I can remember when she was an agent for change. But change will happen without her. It’s happening right now. She can allow herself to be used by the Campbell government as she likes, but the likes of the Campbell government have already been condemned to the dustbins of history. The private business model she advocates is no longer workable. It is killing the earth. And the economy. Good-bye, Tzeporah.”

Anita Burke: Former Sustainability Director for Shell Oil | Founder of the Catalyst Institute |http://www.catalystinstitute.com/

After leaving her Shell International sustainable development and energy portfolio Anita founded Catalyst Institute to do the work she was not allowed to do for the oil company, actually create a genuine sustainable future. She advises governments and businesses on operationalizing real sustainable development and socioeconomic change. Her comments, regarding the “green rift” created in Canada by Tzeporah and General Electric:

“The division was no accidental by-product of their actions. It was the purpose, at least for General Electric. Shell Oil purposefully planned and executed these types of rifts within the environmental movement when I was at Shell. Get em so busy arguing amoungst themselves that it will use up their resources and redirect them from the issues. Tzeporah is just a pawn in their game, and her ego is what they feed on, ego and fear. Sad day for BC. Sorrowful future for Tzeporah’s manipulated and misguided soul.”

Rex Weyler: 40 years in the Canadian environmental movement, Author of “Greenpeace: The Inside Story,” a co-founder of Greenpeace International:

Tzeporah Berman may be well intentioned, but she has embraced Disaster Capitalism, as described by Naomi Klein. She claims that climate change is so urgent, we must turn our natural assets over to General Electric, Plutonic Power, and other global corporations. She talks of “solving global warming,” and “new energy” but she possesses very little knowledge of ecology, energy, or biophysical economics. Perhaps she’s been duped into thinking that since climate warming is urgent, we should turn over our watersheds to General Electric to “solve global warming.” This is a new “green” phase of Disaster Capitalism. At best, this is a sad case of Garrett Harding’s “shallow thinking compassionate person.” At worst, this is an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself. In any case, Tzeporah now speaks for General Electric, not for the Earth, not for wilderness, and not for our children’s future. And General Electric – one of the largest corporations in the world, involved in illegal weapons trading (for which they’ve paid fines), money laundering, and nuclear power – has one single agenda: acquire assets, increase company value, make profits, take the cash. And for this goal, they have one simple strategy regarding nature: Privatize everything. Turn the world into the private property of corporations, and sell it back to the public. On Sunday, February 14, 2010, at an exclusive General Electric banquet in Vancouver, Tzeporah supported GE’s privatization of Canadian rivers. She now represents corporate power, not ecology. Those of us in the ecology and environmental movement have to move on and do the real work.”

Donna Passmore: Campaigner with the Fraser Valley Conservation Coalition, battling the proposed Gateway project that Tzeporah’s “green” political friends in the B.C. Liberal government are building.

“I am disgusted by her stand on run-of-river private power projects.”

Notes from David Shipway:

35 year resident of Cortes Island near Toba Inlet | shipway@island.net | February 3, 2010

Run of river site plan details; Bute Inlet example; This is what the Tzeporah / General Electric “climate policy” is doing to Canadian Watersheds. GE is the big money behind this … with JPMorgan, & the usual crowd ..

“Plutonic Power” is a local GE partner ..

The hydrocarbon cost of Tzeporah Berman’s scheme with General Electric to occupy 300 rivers and watersheds in British Columbia, including 17 rivers in the Toba watershed. First you do the feasibility studies: fly all kinds of engineers, hydrologists, biologists and potential investors around in helicopters a few dozen times, have them work up a detailed plan in well-lit gas-heated offices somewhere, and deliver your plan to govt/public so they can spend lots of time and energy deliberating and dismantling it. Once it’s all a GO, Phase 1 is to build new access or fix any existing roads/bridges, clear various sites and bring in a huge temporary camp facility on several barges. This is the one Pluto set up in Toba, which houses 300 in luxury, was purpose built and shipped from Kamloops… Add a 100KW diesel generator running 24/7 for a year too. Phase 2 is to log and clear turbine and penstock sites with conventional diesel equip. This next pic is the steep trench for Montrose penstock beside the McGyver-Kennedy waterfall, soon barely a trickle. It has a total 2000 m. vertical head. This is approx. 6′ diam steel pipe is laid in a trench that often has to be dynamited through rock, then buried, presumably revegetated later:

A later photo shows they had a slide/blowout near the base, so assume some work has to be repeated. I don’t know how to quantify energy/carbon expense, but it looks like some of this route is heli-access only, so that means some earth-moving machinery and penstock pipe is flown in by chopper, after it has all been barged up the inlet, along with oodles of diesel and such. Not sure where the 2m. diam D penstock pipe comes from (China?), but it’s about 12mm wall thickness, and is epoxy or poly-coated, and the 10m. pieces are double-welded together on-site with portable diesel-powered welders. About 3Km of pipe for each powerhouse. Bute will have 17 of these. Phase 3 is “adjustable dam” and intake- lots of diesel-powed terraforming and concrete:

Phase 4 is turbine/powerhouse construction – first lots of site work with heavy equip.

then Build reinforced concrete powerhouse with steel roof, untold amounts of specialty materials and copper, Pluto’s turbines are imported from Austria, electrical stuff from US.

This is East Toba Powerhouse – 2 turbines with total of 123MW capacity, annual output estimated at 465 GWh. The output of those turbines require stepping up in voltage- so add power substations/transformers. Are they still using PCB’s ?

Phase 5 is transmission corridor – or as Tzeppie says, using General Electric language, “the transmission backbone” – built with road-based equipment and helicopter, for each plant, some 150 Kms x 50m wide transmission corridor logged (a permanent clearcut):

Most of the timber is just left to rot because helicopter time is too expensive to retrieve it. Finally, General Electric and their partners will plant 30m-tall steel towers by helicopter every few hundred metres, with big ceramic insulators and 3 runs of transmission wire. The Bute transmission line will run all the way down to Saltery Bay /Jervis Inlet, where it plugs into the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir line.

Vancouver Media Co-op | http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/macdonald/2824

Tzep calls for gentle tar sands, promotes GE

Tzeporah Berman is readying the ground to sell-out both Greenpeace and the anti-tar sands struggle… Berman is a master of publicity and is already setting the groundwork for future campaigns and betrayals, backroom deals and greenwashing the un-greenable. Since there is no such technology as “clean tar sands” anymore than clean coal, one must assume that this is right in line with why she is promoting the destruction of rivers in BC: to use them as “clean energy.” All members and donors to Greenpeace should IMMEDIATELY alert the organization that if she takes office they will pull all contributions to the organization that once had actual opposition to these kinds of massive destructive developments. Txeporah Berman will make deals with Suncor, in private backrooms. SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS, DO NOT MAKE THEM “FRIENDLY”.

Delores Broton: 30 years in the B.C. environmental movement, editor of the Watershed Sentinel for 15 years. One the most highly respected environmental voices in British Columbia. On the idea of Greenpeace hiring the person who betrayed the Canadian environmental movement:

“What were they thinking? Did they talk to anyone? Does Greenpeace do any due diligence?”

Bob Hunter (October 13, 1941–May 2, 2005) was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Hunter, the first President of Greenpeace, was a long-time campaigner for environmental causes. In 1971, the word “Greenpeace” hadn’t yet been coined.  Bob was a hippy journalist in Vancouver, a town which he described as having “the biggest concentration of tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump stoppers, shit-disturbing unionists, freeway fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites, condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists, animal rights activists, back-to-the-landers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying, anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita, in the world.”

This is the Greenpeace the world fell in love with.   This is the Greenpeace that changed the world with a real movement.  Give us back our old Greenpeace!

What can you do? Take Action! Write Greenpeace today.

Forward this email or write your own concerns and comments to the following people:

• Kumi Naidoo: kumi.naidoo@greenpeace.org | Executive Director, Greenpeace International
• Jessica Wilson: jessica.wilson@greenpeace.org
• Bruce Cox: Executive Director, Greenpeace Canada | cell: | bruce.cox@greenpeace.org
• Nigel Campbell: nigel.campbell@greenpeace.org
• Anne Dingwall: anne.dingwall@greenpeace.org |  Fundraising Director
• Phil Radford: phil.radford@greenpeace.org | Exec. Director, USA
• Jo Kuper: jo.kuper@greenpeace.org
• Martin Lloyd: martin.lloyd@greenpeace.org
• Gene Hashmi: gene.hashmi@greenpeace.org

“We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves” | Marquis De Vauvenargues, 1715-1747)Greenpeace International or Greenpeace Electric???

“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”­ – Chinua Achebe ­ Nigerian Writer

First the tcktcktck scandal and now this. AT COP 15, the spokesperson for TckTckTck was Kumi Naidoo.  Kumi Naidoo is the Chair of  TckTckTck, as well as the executive director of Greenpeace International.

The recent decision by Greenpeace International to hire Tzeporah Berman to direct its global climate and energy campaign could be the most disastrous decision that Greenpeace has ever made. It is quite possible that this move may destroy the organizations reputation in such a damaging way it may never recover. The current economic system has caused us to have entered into what Dr. E.O. Wilson describes as ‘the sixth extinction’ – a phrase that many scientists are now using. We now face climate catastrophe on a dying planet already well on the pathway to a 6C temperature rise which will kill off most life. This recent appointment of Tzeporah Berman could be the greatest threat climate change justice has yet to face. Who is Tzeporah Berman anyway? Tzeporah Berman could be described as a Trojan horse for the biggest corporations on the planet. She has successfully entrenched her way into the position of bargaining away nature to the corporations, under the guise of an environmentalist. Perhaps this is a seemingly much better strategy than just having Pat Moore “ex-Greenpeace” running around supporting the corporations. The corporations have finally succeeded in placing a compromised ‘environmentalist’ into the very heart of Greenpeace – the most recognized environmental organization on the planet. The day after Tzeporah Berman announced her new Greenpeace role, she walked into an exclusive General Electric (GE) banquet (past the real environmental protesters) and delivered a speech supporting the privatization of some 600 rivers in British Columbia, Canada, for the benefit of GE and their subsidiaries and partners. So there was Greenpeace (not officially, of course, but in the public mind) endorsing the wholesale surrender of our environment to one of the most predatory corporations on the planet – GE has paid fines for illegal weapons trade fraud, money laundering, etc.

“There is nothing more dangerous than a shallow thinking compassionate person.” – Garrett Hardin

On a positive note – such a scandal may be the one that will finally expose the corporatization of compromised NGOs and the deafening silence on the reality of climate change which has been going on behind the scenes for quite some time – to which the public are mostly unaware.

Also amazing; right now, in the climate justice movement something extraordinarily important is happening.  After Copenhagen – a line is finally being drawn in the sand. True climate justice groups are now refusing to sign onto to any statement that endorses a temperature which exceeds a 1C temperature rise. As compromised NGOs are still clinging to the suicidal 1.5C – 2C temperatures, we will now finally see a clear divide. True climate justice groups versus the compromised NGOs. As well, true climate justice groups are now mobilizing to endorse a global emergency declaration on climate change. Again, those who do not sign on will be easily identified as those with vested interests.

The Tzeporah Berman specialty: Disaster Capitalism

The message behind disaster capitalism campaigning is this; climate change is “so urgent” that we have to turn the planet over to GE and other corporations to “save us.” This is all bullshit. This messaging is designed with the purpose of gaining corporate control of Earths natural assets. The question is, what has gone wrong at Greenpeace International? Is it i) lack of due-diligence, ii) lack of research ii) lack of knowledge or iv) is this the new direction of Greenpeace? Did they not speak to anyone in Canada who has dealt with Tzeporah Berman? (See extensive list of comments below including comments from Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler). With the Earth now passing several planetary boundaries and ecosystems now failing, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world – disaster capitalism is now set to explode.

General Electric

To help sell their corporate privatization of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, GE placed Tzeporah on the cover of their magazine, Reader’s Digest. General Electric, which owns one of the world’s largest media conglomerates – as well as weapons production, weapons trade, and military contracts – owns Reader’s Digest through GE Capital with partners Bank of America and JPMorgan. GE has a history of using Reader’s Digest to hype its offspring, including a health Insurance company, its astroturf organizations, and now, their well trained “environmentalist,” Tzeporah Berman. Keep in mind that General Electric plays both sides of the climate “debate”. While they support astroturf organizations – such as Tzeporah’s “Power UP Canada” to sell their private acquisition of Canadian public assets; allegedly to build “alternative power” and “reduce global warming”, they simultaneously fund the organizations that deny global warming. GE funds the American Petroleum Institute, for example, and it’s astroturf affiliates such as “Energy Citizens,” who stage “grassroots” rallies to deny climate change and defeat climate legislation in the U.S. General Electric is a member of American Petroleum Institute (API), along with Dow, Bechtel, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP America, ConocoPhillips, General Siemens, Enbridge, and so forth.

GE is also a member of United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – an organization which supports a target of 450-550 parts per million of CO2 – which is suicidal. USCA consists of corporately funded NGOs such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and these corporatized NGOs partner with the likes of Shell, The Dow Chemical Company and many more multinational corporations who continue to exploit both people and planet in the name of insatiable corporate profits. Will Greenpeace International be the next to get in bed with USCAP?

GE is a member through GE Oil & Gas Conmec and General Electric Inspection Services (both link directly to GE Energy) GE Energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and delivery from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy. GE is now moving into renewable resources such as water, wind, and solar by acquiring rights to those energy resources worldwide. In B.C. their plan is to privatize some 600 watersheds, acquire the water and energy resources, and then sell it back to the public at exorbitant prices they set with the corrupted government that they support. GE takes B.C. public and ecological assets and not even pays trinkets, but rather makes citizens pay with a liability to buy their power at a rate they’ve wrangled from Gordon Campbell and his accenture (former Arthur Anderson of the Enron cookie jar crowd) advisors. General Electric helped fund these climate change denial campaigns, while simultaneously using the urgency of global warming to make a grab for hundreds of rivers, tributaries, and watersheds in British Columbia, Canada. They’ve attached Tzeporah Berman to the deal to give it a green patina. One could argue that, Tzeporah, in essence, represents General Electric. She is now their allegedly friendly face of privatization. She stands in opposition to the people of British Columbia, the grass roots environmental organizations, the long-standing Canadian ecology groups – Greenpeace, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, BC Citizens for Public Power, Indigenous Environmental Network and others. General Electric: one of the most destructive corporations on the planet. Involved in global weapons manufacture and trade, with international criminal convictions for weapons trading fraud and money laundering, deeply institutionalized in the U.S. Defense Contract community, controlling massive media ownership – including Reader’s Digest.

Copenhagen – For some, a tiny tax outweighs massive environmental destruction

On December 29than article by Roger Annis appeared on Climate & Capitalism; Here is an excerpt;

At first glance, it seemed that the “Yes Men” had scored another comedic coup for Mother Earth. CBC Radio news reported on December 16 that on the previous day, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell was feted and presented an environmental award by many of Canada’s well-heeled “environmental groups” during the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen. Hah! Great gag, guys! And very timely. An embarrassingly large number of people and agencies in Canada and abroad have been hoodwinked by the BC government’s claims to environmental stewardship and its greenwashing propaganda. But wait, the story proves to be true and not a gag at all! Campbell actually did receive an ‘Economy Wide Carbon Pricing’ award from Tzeporah Berman of PowerUp Canada, one of ten of Canada’s best funded “environmental groups” that endorsed the award, presented at a gala recognizing “acts of climate leadership” by municipal and provincial governments across Canada. Other award endorsers are the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, ForestEthics, the Green Energy Act Alliance, the Pembina Institute, TckTckTck, and WWF Canada.

Voices of dissent

The Sierra Club did not participate in the Copenhagen award gala. Executive Director George Heyman, a former long-time president of the BC Government Employees Union, said the BC Liberals have taken a lot of actions that are “deeply contradictory” to its greenwashing propaganda. Heyman pointed out that fuel is exempt from the soon-to-be-imposed Harmonized Sales Tax, but the labour for energy efficient home retrofits is not. “They’re also providing massive subsidies to the oil and gas industry. . . and supporting a massive pipeline to move dirty tar sands oil across B.C.,” he said. Voices of concern are on the rise from the Indigenous peoples living in the coal and gas rich regions. Writing in the Vancouver Sun on December 22, Kathie Dickie, Chief of the 800-member Fort Nelson First Nation, expressed grave concern over two giant gas processing facilities being built near Fort Nelson, in northeast B.C. Chief Dickie wrote there has been no meaningful consultation with her people concerning the environmental impacts of En Cana Corporation’s Cabin Gas Plant nor a Spectra Gas plant to be located 15 kilometers away. Cabin Gas, once constructed, will be the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the province. One BC government official told the Fort Nelson First Nation that its 100-year old treaty with Canada does not guarantee clean air. “Imagine being told by a government official in 2009 that you have no say on the quality of air you or your children breathe! What parent would stand for it?” Dickie asked. The pale green groups that honored Gordon Campbell should be ashamed. His government should be condemned, not praised.

This must be stopped

There must be an international response. Please circulate this to all of your contacts concerned for the environment and climate justice. See the email addresses for Greenpeace staff below. We now stand on the cusp of the bleakest periods where we are confronted with the zero point of systemic collapse. Now is the time to be bold. No more compromise. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the corporatized NGOs who have hijacked the environmental movement. Such compromised NGO behaviour has been nothing less than an absolute detriment to the real environmental movement. The same compromised NGOs have and continue to obstruct real climate justice by keeping the public in the dark on the necessary targets we must demand to avert the climate crisis we now face. Below is one of the most truthful videos on climate change that exists today.

The Vancouver Media Coop in Canada are promoting an excellent idea of having Greenpeace members and donors contact Greenpeace expressing their disapproval. This must happen on the largest possible scale.

The Pale Green Patina; How General Electric promotes their trained “Environmentalist”

 

General Electric is hyping Tzeporah Berman, BC’s pale green media princess, as “The New Face of Environmentalism” while she helps them sell their private power deals in Canada. Their goal: to privatize Canadian rivers for corporate profit. Stumping for GE: Sunday, February 15, 2010: The day after announcing her new “greenpeace” role, Tzeporah marched into the private General Electric banquet with the GE executives and security guards, past the Wilderness Committee and other protesters. Inside, she delivered a stump speech supporting the corporate privatization of B.C. wilderness rivers. She is also in favour of the Canadian Tar Sands … with similar phoney-green promises.

Here is the result of Tzeporah’s brand of industrial corporate faux environmentalism;

The once pristine Toba Inlet watershed

This individual who Greenpeace International has hired has successfully betrayed her homeland and alienated the real environmental movement. She crossed an environmental picket to promote the global privatization plans of General Electric.

Pale Green Goes Hollywood

Tzeporah & Paris: savouring the taste of fame

Ego knows no bounds. A taste for power

while cutting deals with corporations and selling of the natural world.

Ms. Berman presenting a “Green” Award to the man who privatized British Columbia, sold it to General Electric and other international corporations, who built highways across farmland and called it “green;” who reversed dioxin effluent safeguards that we fought for and instituted in B.C. to protect our water; who sold off the public and natural heritage of British Columbia and opened the doors to General Electric to occupy hundreds of watersheds, devastate riparian ecosystems, and destroy forests for transmission lines to carry expensive power to mines in the north and to sprawling cities in the U.S.

 

It’s not easy being the pale green patina over the corporate industrialization of Canada.

Comments from BC environmentalists

Barbara Stowe:

Barbara was a teenager at the first Greenpeace meetings in 1970. Her parents, Dorothy and Irving, are founders of Greenpeace.

“Tzeporah’s support of our anti-environmental, union-busting, social-program-slashing government during an election campaign last year appalled me. She certainly knew her remarks would be used to help the powers that be get re-elected (as did occur). At the best, her actions showed a disturbing lack of judgement. Her stance on the Run of River projects deeply concerns me, and as for applauding our premier because he was sly enough to know that instituting a carbon tax would pull votes from the Greens and other left leaning parties…well, I’m very concerned that GPI would consider working with someone with her views. Given the response of environmentalists in BC to her actions last year, there is no doubt that this hire would cause serious rifts between Greenpeace and the environmental community.”

Clayoquot Sound original activists:

The founders of Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) consider Tzeporah an opportunist who used them and Clayoquot to climb the publicity ladder into cozy deals with the logging companies. Tzeporah used other people’s jail time for her own advancement. She stepped on a lot of people to get inside the corporate boardrooms that she is now so comfortable in. Here are comments from early Clayoquot activists in Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS):

Andrew Struthers in his history, The Green Shadow:

“Summer faded. The face of Mother Winter appeared in the sky over the Black Hole. Things got tense. Tzapata got into a giant queen bee struggle with Artemis, a woman who had been with the Friends since the Sulpher Pass days. Artemis got fired. When The Boss can tell you to clean out your desk, it’s just not anarchy anymore.”

Janie Jones:

Berman continued to queen bee her way through the FOCS, Greenpeace and then into her own organization ForestEthics and now, PowerUp Canada. Berman did not “lead” the blocades at Clayoquot Sound as she claims. They were organized, led and financed (one American heiress pretty well underwrote the whole thing) by the Friends of Clayoquot Sound of whom Berman became a member. Most of the original Friends, all residents of the area, had already been convicted of protesting the clearcut logging the summer before and, as part of their conditions, could not attend the daily blockades at Kennedy Lake, which is why they invited the world come there and protest for them. Ms. Berman, a former fashion student from Toronto with no direct experience or knowledge of the forest industry or the BC culture it supported, was one of over ten thousand who showed up. Because of the void at the site combined with her natural leadership qualities, the charismatic and photogenicyoung Berman rose to prominence as model/spokesperson for the daily ritual of blockading, readings of injunction and arrests.”

Betty Krawczyk: The real Clayoquot forest activist – Author of Clayoquot: The Sound Of My Heart (January 1997) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Krawczyk

Krawczyk is the woman who stood up to police, logging companies, and the courts, arrested many times at Clayoquot, Eagle Ridge Bluff, and other forest destruction sites. She did her first jail stint in 1993 at the age of 65, blockading logging trucks, and she’s still at it, today, at age 82. Here are some of her thoughts on Tzeporah’s betrayal of the B.C. environmental movement:

“Tzeporah Berman has evidently gone over to Gordon Campbell’s camp. Perhaps she is seeking a Liberal political appointment. Too bad. I can remember when she was an agent for change. But change will happen without her. It’s happening right now. She can allow herself to be used by the Campbell government as she likes, but the likes of the Campbell government have already been condemned to the dustbins of history. The private business model she advocates is no longer workable. It is killing the earth. And the economy. Good-bye, Tzeporah.”

Anita Burke: Former Sustainability Director for Shell Oil | Founder of the Catalyst Institute |http://www.catalystinstitute.com/

After leaving her Shell International sustainable development and energy portfolio Anita founded Catalyst Institute to do the work she was not allowed to do for the oil company, actually create a genuine sustainable future. She advises governments and businesses on operationalizing real sustainable development and socioeconomic change. Her comments, regarding the “green rift” created in Canada by Tzeporah and General Electric:

“The division was no accidental by-product of their actions. It was the purpose, at least for General Electric. Shell Oil purposefully planned and executed these types of rifts within the environmental movement when I was at Shell. Get em so busy arguing amoungst themselves that it will use up their resources and redirect them from the issues. Tzeporah is just a pawn in their game, and her ego is what they feed on, ego and fear. Sad day for BC. Sorrowful future for Tzeporah’s manipulated and misguided soul.”

Rex Weyler: 40 years in the Canadian environmental movement, Author of “Greenpeace: The Inside Story,” a co-founder of Greenpeace International:

Tzeporah Berman may be well intentioned, but she has embraced Disaster Capitalism, as described by Naomi Klein. She claims that climate change is so urgent, we must turn our natural assets over to General Electric, Plutonic Power, and other global corporations. She talks of “solving global warming,” and “new energy” but she possesses very little knowledge of ecology, energy, or biophysical economics. Perhaps she’s been duped into thinking that since climate warming is urgent, we should turn over our watersheds to General Electric to “solve global warming.” This is a new “green” phase of Disaster Capitalism. At best, this is a sad case of Garrett Harding’s “shallow thinking compassionate person.” At worst, this is an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself. In any case, Tzeporah now speaks for General Electric, not for the Earth, not for wilderness, and not for our children’s future. And General Electric – one of the largest corporations in the world, involved in illegal weapons trading (for which they’ve paid fines), money laundering, and nuclear power – has one single agenda: acquire assets, increase company value, make profits, take the cash. And for this goal, they have one simple strategy regarding nature: Privatize everything. Turn the world into the private property of corporations, and sell it back to the public. On Sunday, February 14, 2010, at an exclusive General Electric banquet in Vancouver, Tzeporah supported GE’s privatization of Canadian rivers. She now represents corporate power, not ecology. Those of us in the ecology and environmental movement have to move on and do the real work.”

Donna Passmore: Campaigner with the Fraser Valley Conservation Coalition, battling the proposed Gateway project that Tzeporah’s “green” political friends in the B.C. Liberal government are building.

“I am disgusted by her stand on run-of-river private power projects.”

Notes from David Shipway:

35 year resident of Cortes Island near Toba Inlet | shipway@island.net | February 3, 2010

Run of river site plan details; Bute Inlet example; This is what the Tzeporah / General Electric “climate policy” is doing to Canadian Watersheds. GE is the big money behind this … with JPMorgan, & the usual crowd ..

“Plutonic Power” is a local GE partner ..

The hydrocarbon cost of Tzeporah Berman’s scheme with General Electric to occupy 300 rivers and watersheds in British Columbia, including 17 rivers in the Toba watershed. First you do the feasibility studies: fly all kinds of engineers, hydrologists, biologists and potential investors around in helicopters a few dozen times, have them work up a detailed plan in well-lit gas-heated offices somewhere, and deliver your plan to govt/public so they can spend lots of time and energy deliberating and dismantling it. Once it’s all a GO, Phase 1 is to build new access or fix any existing roads/bridges, clear various sites and bring in a huge temporary camp facility on several barges. This is the one Pluto set up in Toba, which houses 300 in luxury, was purpose built and shipped from Kamloops… Add a 100KW diesel generator running 24/7 for a year too. Phase 2 is to log and clear turbine and penstock sites with conventional diesel equip. This next pic is the steep trench for Montrose penstock beside the McGyver-Kennedy waterfall, soon barely a trickle. It has a total 2000 m. vertical head. This is approx. 6′ diam steel pipe is laid in a trench that often has to be dynamited through rock, then buried, presumably revegetated later:

A later photo shows they had a slide/blowout near the base, so assume some work has to be repeated. I don’t know how to quantify energy/carbon expense, but it looks like some of this route is heli-access only, so that means some earth-moving machinery and penstock pipe is flown in by chopper, after it has all been barged up the inlet, along with oodles of diesel and such. Not sure where the 2m. diam D penstock pipe comes from (China?), but it’s about 12mm wall thickness, and is epoxy or poly-coated, and the 10m. pieces are double-welded together on-site with portable diesel-powered welders. About 3Km of pipe for each powerhouse. Bute will have 17 of these. Phase 3 is “adjustable dam” and intake- lots of diesel-powed terraforming and concrete:

Phase 4 is turbine/powerhouse construction – first lots of site work with heavy equip.

then Build reinforced concrete powerhouse with steel roof, untold amounts of specialty materials and copper, Pluto’s turbines are imported from Austria, electrical stuff from US.

This is East Toba Powerhouse – 2 turbines with total of 123MW capacity, annual output estimated at 465 GWh. The output of those turbines require stepping up in voltage- so add power substations/transformers. Are they still using PCB’s ?

Phase 5 is transmission corridor – or as Tzeppie says, using General Electric language, “the transmission backbone” – built with road-based equipment and helicopter, for each plant, some 150 Kms x 50m wide transmission corridor logged (a permanent clearcut):

Most of the timber is just left to rot because helicopter time is too expensive to retrieve it. Finally, General Electric and their partners will plant 30m-tall steel towers by helicopter every few hundred metres, with big ceramic insulators and 3 runs of transmission wire. The Bute transmission line will run all the way down to Saltery Bay /Jervis Inlet, where it plugs into the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir line.

Vancouver Media Co-op | http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/macdonald/2824

Tzep calls for gentle tar sands, promotes GE

Tzeporah Berman is readying the ground to sell-out both Greenpeace and the anti-tar sands struggle… Berman is a master of publicity and is already setting the groundwork for future campaigns and betrayals, backroom deals and greenwashing the un-greenable. Since there is no such technology as “clean tar sands” anymore than clean coal, one must assume that this is right in line with why she is promoting the destruction of rivers in BC: to use them as “clean energy.” All members and donors to Greenpeace should IMMEDIATELY alert the organization that if she takes office they will pull all contributions to the organization that once had actual opposition to these kinds of massive destructive developments. Txeporah Berman will make deals with Suncor, in private backrooms. SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS, DO NOT MAKE THEM “FRIENDLY”.

Delores Broton: 30 years in the B.C. environmental movement, editor of the Watershed Sentinel for 15 years. One the most highly respected environmental voices in British Columbia. On the idea of Greenpeace hiring the person who betrayed the Canadian environmental movement:

“What were they thinking? Did they talk to anyone? Does Greenpeace do any due diligence?”

Bob Hunter (October 13, 1941–May 2, 2005) was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Hunter, the first President of Greenpeace, was a long-time campaigner for environmental causes. In 1971, the word “Greenpeace” hadn’t yet been coined.  Bob was a hippy journalist in Vancouver, a town which he described as having “the biggest concentration of tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump stoppers, shit-disturbing unionists, freeway fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites, condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists, animal rights activists, back-to-the-landers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying, anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita, in the world.”

This is the Greenpeace the world fell in love with.   This is the Greenpeace that changed the world with a real movement.  Give us back our old Greenpeace!

What can you do? Take Action! Write Greenpeace today.

Forward this email or write your own concerns and comments to the following people:

• Kumi Naidoo: kumi.naidoo@greenpeace.org | Executive Director, Greenpeace International
• Jessica Wilson: jessica.wilson@greenpeace.org
• Bruce Cox: Executive Director, Greenpeace Canada | cell: | bruce.cox@greenpeace.org
• Nigel Campbell: nigel.campbell@greenpeace.org
• Anne Dingwall: anne.dingwall@greenpeace.org |  Fundraising Director
• Phil Radford: phil.radford@greenpeace.org | Exec. Director, USA
• Jo Kuper: jo.kuper@greenpeace.org
• Martin Lloyd: martin.lloyd@greenpeace.org
• Gene Hashmi: gene.hashmi@greenpeace.org

“We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves” | Marquis De Vauvenargues, 1715-1747)Greenpeace International or Greenpeace Electric???

“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”­ – Chinua Achebe ­ Nigerian Writer

First the tcktcktck scandal and now this. AT COP 15, the spokesperson for TckTckTck was Kumi Naidoo.  Kumi Naidoo is the Chair of  TckTckTck, as well as the executive director of Greenpeace International.

The recent decision by Greenpeace International to hire Tzeporah Berman to direct its global climate and energy campaign could be the most disastrous decision that Greenpeace has ever made. It is quite possible that this move may destroy the organizations reputation in such a damaging way it may never recover. The current economic system has caused us to have entered into what Dr. E.O. Wilson describes as ‘the sixth extinction’ – a phrase that many scientists are now using. We now face climate catastrophe on a dying planet already well on the pathway to a 6C temperature rise which will kill off most life. This recent appointment of Tzeporah Berman could be the greatest threat climate change justice has yet to face. Who is Tzeporah Berman anyway? Tzeporah Berman could be described as a Trojan horse for the biggest corporations on the planet. She has successfully entrenched her way into the position of bargaining away nature to the corporations, under the guise of an environmentalist. Perhaps this is a seemingly much better strategy than just having Pat Moore “ex-Greenpeace” running around supporting the corporations. The corporations have finally succeeded in placing a compromised ‘environmentalist’ into the very heart of Greenpeace – the most recognized environmental organization on the planet. The day after Tzeporah Berman announced her new Greenpeace role, she walked into an exclusive General Electric (GE) banquet (past the real environmental protesters) and delivered a speech supporting the privatization of some 600 rivers in British Columbia, Canada, for the benefit of GE and their subsidiaries and partners. So there was Greenpeace (not officially, of course, but in the public mind) endorsing the wholesale surrender of our environment to one of the most predatory corporations on the planet – GE has paid fines for illegal weapons trade fraud, money laundering, etc.

“There is nothing more dangerous than a shallow thinking compassionate person.” – Garrett Hardin

On a positive note – such a scandal may be the one that will finally expose the corporatization of compromised NGOs and the deafening silence on the reality of climate change which has been going on behind the scenes for quite some time – to which the public are mostly unaware.

Also amazing; right now, in the climate justice movement something extraordinarily important is happening.  After Copenhagen – a line is finally being drawn in the sand. True climate justice groups are now refusing to sign onto to any statement that endorses a temperature which exceeds a 1C temperature rise. As compromised NGOs are still clinging to the suicidal 1.5C – 2C temperatures, we will now finally see a clear divide. True climate justice groups verses the compromised NGOs. As well, true climate justice groups are now mobilizing to endorse a global emergency declaration on climate change. Again, those who do not sign on will be easily identified as those with vested interests.

The Tzeporah Berman specialty: Disaster Capitalism

The message behind disaster capitalism campaigning is this; climate change is “so urgent” that we have to turn the planet over to GE and other corporations to “save us.” This is all bullshit. This messaging is designed with the purpose of gaining corporate control of Earths natural assets. The question is, what has gone wrong at Greenpeace International? Is it i) lack of due-diligence, ii) lack of research ii) lack of knowledge or iv) is this the new direction of Greenpeace? Did they not speak to anyone in Canada who has dealt with Tzeporah Berman? (See extensive list of comments below including comments from Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler). With the Earth now passing several planetary boundaries and ecosystems now failing, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world – disaster capitalism is now set to explode.

General Electric

To help sell their corporate privatization of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, GE placed Tzeporah on the cover of their magazine, Reader’s Digest. General Electric, which owns one of the world’s largest media conglomerates – as well as weapons production, weapons trade, and military contracts – owns Reader’s Digest through GE Capital with partners Bank of America and JPMorgan. GE has a history of using Reader’s Digest to hype its offspring, including a health Insurance company, its astroturf organizations, and now, their well trained “environmentalist,” Tzeporah Berman. Keep in mind that General Electric plays both sides of the climate “debate”. While they support astroturf organizations – such as Tzeporah’s “Power UP Canada” to sell their private acquisition of Canadian public assets; allegedly to build “alternative power” and “reduce global warming”, they simultaneously fund the organizations that deny global warming. GE funds the American Petroleum Institute, for example, and it’s astroturf affiliates such as “Energy Citizens,” who stage “grassroots” rallies to deny climate change and defeat climate legislation in the U.S. General Electric is a member of American Petroleum Institute (API), along with Dow, Bechtel, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP America, ConocoPhillips, General Siemens, Enbridge, and so forth.

GE is also a member of United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – an organization which supports a target of 450-550 parts per million of CO2 – which is suicidal. USCA consists of corporately funded NGOs such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and these corporatized NGOs partner with the likes of Shell, The Dow Chemical Company and many more multinational corporations who continue to exploit both people and planet in the name of insatiable corporate profits. Will Greenpeace International be the next to get in bed with USCAP?

GE is a member through GE Oil & Gas Conmec and General Electric Inspection Services (both link directly to GE Energy) GE Energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and delivery from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy. GE is now moving into renewable resources such as water, wind, and solar by acquiring rights to those energy resources worldwide. In B.C. their plan is to privatize some 600 watersheds, acquire the water and energy resources, and then sell it back to the public at exorbitant prices they set with the corrupted government that they support. GE takes B.C. public and ecological assets and not even pays trinkets, but rather makes citizens pay with a liability to buy their power at a rate they’ve wrangled from Gordon Campbell and his accenture (former Arthur Anderson of the Enron cookie jar crowd) advisors. General Electric helped fund these climate change denial campaigns, while simultaneously using the urgency of global warming to make a grab for hundreds of rivers, tributaries, and watersheds in British Columbia, Canada. They’ve attached Tzeporah Berman to the deal to give it a green patina. One could argue that, Tzeporah, in essence, represents General Electric. She is now their allegedly friendly face of privatization. She stands in opposition to the people of British Columbia, the grass roots environmental organizations, the long-standing Canadian ecology groups – Greenpeace, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, BC Citizens for Public Power, Indigenous Environmental Network and others. General Electric: one of the most destructive corporations on the planet. Involved in global weapons manufacture and trade, with international criminal convictions for weapons trading fraud and money laundering, deeply institutionalized in the U.S. Defense Contract community, controlling massive media ownership – including Reader’s Digest.

Copenhagen – For some, a tiny tax outweighs massive environmental destruction

On December 29than article by Roger Annis appeared on Climate & Capitalism; Here is an excerpt;

At first glance, it seemed that the “Yes Men” had scored another comedic coup for Mother Earth. CBC Radio news reported on December 16 that on the previous day, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell was feted and presented an environmental award by many of Canada’s well-heeled “environmental groups” during the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen. Hah! Great gag, guys! And very timely. An embarrassingly large number of people and agencies in Canada and abroad have been hoodwinked by the BC government’s claims to environmental stewardship and its greenwashing propaganda. But wait, the story proves to be true and not a gag at all! Campbell actually did receive an ‘Economy Wide Carbon Pricing’ award from Tzeporah Berman of PowerUp Canada, one of ten of Canada’s best funded “environmental groups” that endorsed the award, presented at a gala recognizing “acts of climate leadership” by municipal and provincial governments across Canada. Other award endorsers are the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, ForestEthics, the Green Energy Act Alliance, the Pembina Institute, TckTckTck, and WWF Canada.

Voices of dissent

The Sierra Club did not participate in the Copenhagen award gala. Executive Director George Heyman, a former long-time president of the BC Government Employees Union, said the BC Liberals have taken a lot of actions that are “deeply contradictory” to its greenwashing propaganda. Heyman pointed out that fuel is exempt from the soon-to-be-imposed Harmonized Sales Tax, but the labour for energy efficient home retrofits is not. “They’re also providing massive subsidies to the oil and gas industry. . . and supporting a massive pipeline to move dirty tar sands oil across B.C.,” he said. Voices of concern are on the rise from the Indigenous peoples living in the coal and gas rich regions. Writing in the Vancouver Sun on December 22, Kathie Dickie, Chief of the 800-member Fort Nelson First Nation, expressed grave concern over two giant gas processing facilities being built near Fort Nelson, in northeast B.C. Chief Dickie wrote there has been no meaningful consultation with her people concerning the environmental impacts of En Cana Corporation’s Cabin Gas Plant nor a Spectra Gas plant to be located 15 kilometers away. Cabin Gas, once constructed, will be the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the province. One BC government official told the Fort Nelson First Nation that its 100-year old treaty with Canada does not guarantee clean air. “Imagine being told by a government official in 2009 that you have no say on the quality of air you or your children breathe! What parent would stand for it?” Dickie asked. The pale green groups that honored Gordon Campbell should be ashamed. His government should be condemned, not praised.

This must be stopped

There must be an international response. Please circulate this to all of your contacts concerned for the environment and climate justice. See the email addresses for Greenpeace staff below. We now stand on the cusp of the bleakest periods where we are confronted with the zero point of systemic collapse. Now is the time to be bold. No more compromise. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the corporatized NGOs who have hijacked the environmental movement. Such compromised NGO behaviour has been nothing less than an absolute detriment to the real environmental movement. The same compromised NGOs have and continue to obstruct real climate justice by keeping the public in the dark on the necessary targets we must demand to avert the climate crisis we now face. Below is one of the most truthful videos on climate change that exists today.

The Vancouver Media Coop in Canada are promoting an excellent idea of having Greenpeace members and donors contact Greenpeace expressing their disapproval. This must happen on the largest possible scale.

The Pale Green Patina; How General Electric promotes their trained “Environmentalist”

General Electric is hyping Tzeporah Berman, BC’s pale green media princess, as “The New Face of Environmentalism” while she helps them sell their private power deals in Canada. Their goal: to privatize Canadian rivers for corporate profit. Stumping for GE: Sunday, February 15, 2010: The day after announcing her new “greenpeace” role, Tzeporah marched into the private General Electric banquet with the GE executives and security guards, past the Wilderness Committee and other protesters. Inside, she delivered a stump speech supporting the corporate privatization of B.C. wilderness rivers. She is also in favour of the Canadian Tar Sands … with similar phoney-green promises.

Here is the result of Tzeporah’s brand of industrial corporate faux environmentalism;

The once pristine Toba Inlet watershed

This individual who Greenpeace International has hired has successfully betrayed her homeland and alienated the real environmental movement. She crossed an environmental picket to promote the global privatization plans of General Electric.

Pale Green Goes Hollywood

Tzeporah & Paris: savouring the taste of fame

Ego knows no bounds. A taste for power

while cutting deals with corporations and selling of the natural world.

Ms. Berman presenting a “Green” Award to the man who privatized British Columbia, sold it to General Electric and other international corporations, who built highways across farmland and called it “green;” who reversed dioxin effluent safeguards that we fought for and instituted in B.C. to protect our water; who sold off the public and natural heritage of British Columbia and opened the doors to General Electric to occupy hundreds of watersheds, devastate riparian ecosystems, and destroy forests for transmission lines to carry expensive power to mines in the north and to sprawling cities in the U.S.

It’s not easy being the pale green patina over the corporate industrialization of Canada.

Comments from BC environmentalists

Barbara Stowe:

Barbara was a teenager at the first Greenpeace meetings in 1970. Her parents, Dorothy and Irving, are founders of Greenpeace.

“Tzeporah’s support of our anti-environmental, union-busting, social-program-slashing government during an election campaign last year appalled me. She certainly knew her remarks would be used to help the powers that be get re-elected (as did occur). At the best, her actions showed a disturbing lack of judgement. Her stance on the Run of River projects deeply concerns me, and as for applauding our premier because he was sly enough to know that instituting a carbon tax would pull votes from the Greens and other left leaning parties…well, I’m very concerned that GPI would consider working with someone with her views. Given the response of environmentalists in BC to her actions last year, there is no doubt that this hire would cause serious rifts between Greenpeace and the environmental community.”

Clayoquot Sound original activists:

The founders of Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) consider Tzeporah an opportunist who used them and Clayoquot to climb the publicity ladder into cozy deals with the logging companies. Tzeporah used other people’s jail time for her own advancement. She stepped on a lot of people to get inside the corporate boardrooms that she is now so comfortable in. Here are comments from early Clayoquot activists in Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS):

Andrew Struthers in his history, The Green Shadow:

“Summer faded. The face of Mother Winter appeared in the sky over the Black Hole. Things got tense. Tzapata got into a giant queen bee struggle with Artemis, a woman who had been with the Friends since the Sulpher Pass days. Artemis got fired. When The Boss can tell you to clean out your desk, it’s just not anarchy anymore.”

Janie Jones:

Berman continued to queen bee her way through the FOCS, Greenpeace and then into her own organization ForestEthics and now, PowerUp Canada. Berman did not “lead” the blocades at Clayoquot Sound as she claims. They were organized, led and financed (one American heiress pretty well underwrote the whole thing) by the Friends of Clayoquot Sound of whom Berman became a member. Most of the original Friends, all residents of the area, had already been convicted of protesting the clearcut logging the summer before and, as part of their conditions, could not attend the daily blockades at Kennedy Lake, which is why they invited the world come there and protest for them. Ms. Berman, a former fashion student from Toronto with no direct experience or knowledge of the forest industry or the BC culture it supported, was one of over ten thousand who showed up. Because of the void at the site combined with her natural leadership qualities, the charismatic and photogenicyoung Berman rose to prominence as model/spokesperson for the daily ritual of blockading, readings of injunction and arrests.”

Betty Krawczyk: The real Clayoquot forest activist – Author of Clayoquot: The Sound Of My Heart (January 1997) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Krawczyk

Krawczyk is the woman who stood up to police, logging companies, and the courts, arrested many times at Clayoquot, Eagle Ridge Bluff, and other forest destruction sites. She did her first jail stint in 1993 at the age of 65, blockading logging trucks, and she’s still at it, today, at age 82. Here are some of her thoughts on Tzeporah’s betrayal of the B.C. environmental movement:

“Tzeporah Berman has evidently gone over to Gordon Campbell’s camp. Perhaps she is seeking a Liberal political appointment. Too bad. I can remember when she was an agent for change. But change will happen without her. It’s happening right now. She can allow herself to be used by the Campbell government as she likes, but the likes of the Campbell government have already been condemned to the dustbins of history. The private business model she advocates is no longer workable. It is killing the earth. And the economy. Good-bye, Tzeporah.”

Anita Burke: Former Sustainability Director for Shell Oil | Founder of the Catalyst Institute |http://www.catalystinstitute.com/

After leaving her Shell International sustainable development and energy portfolio Anita founded Catalyst Institute to do the work she was not allowed to do for the oil company, actually create a genuine sustainable future. She advises governments and businesses on operationalizing real sustainable development and socioeconomic change. Her comments, regarding the “green rift” created in Canada by Tzeporah and General Electric:

“The division was no accidental by-product of their actions. It was the purpose, at least for General Electric. Shell Oil purposefully planned and executed these types of rifts within the environmental movement when I was at Shell. Get em so busy arguing amoungst themselves that it will use up their resources and redirect them from the issues. Tzeporah is just a pawn in their game, and her ego is what they feed on, ego and fear. Sad day for BC. Sorrowful future for Tzeporah’s manipulated and misguided soul.”

Rex Weyler: 40 years in the Canadian environmental movement, Author of “Greenpeace: The Inside Story,” a co-founder of Greenpeace International:

Tzeporah Berman may be well intentioned, but she has embraced Disaster Capitalism, as described by Naomi Klein. She claims that climate change is so urgent, we must turn our natural assets over to General Electric, Plutonic Power, and other global corporations. She talks of “solving global warming,” and “new energy” but she possesses very little knowledge of ecology, energy, or biophysical economics. Perhaps she’s been duped into thinking that since climate warming is urgent, we should turn over our watersheds to General Electric to “solve global warming.” This is a new “green” phase of Disaster Capitalism. At best, this is a sad case of Garrett Harding’s “shallow thinking compassionate person.” At worst, this is an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself. In any case, Tzeporah now speaks for General Electric, not for the Earth, not for wilderness, and not for our children’s future. And General Electric – one of the largest corporations in the world, involved in illegal weapons trading (for which they’ve paid fines), money laundering, and nuclear power – has one single agenda: acquire assets, increase company value, make profits, take the cash. And for this goal, they have one simple strategy regarding nature: Privatize everything. Turn the world into the private property of corporations, and sell it back to the public. On Sunday, February 14, 2010, at an exclusive General Electric banquet in Vancouver, Tzeporah supported GE’s privatization of Canadian rivers. She now represents corporate power, not ecology. Those of us in the ecology and environmental movement have to move on and do the real work.”

Donna Passmore: Campaigner with the Fraser Valley Conservation Coalition, battling the proposed Gateway project that Tzeporah’s “green” political friends in the B.C. Liberal government are building.

“I am disgusted by her stand on run-of-river private power projects.”

Notes from David Shipway:

35 year resident of Cortes Island near Toba Inlet | shipway@island.net | February 3, 2010

Run of river site plan details; Bute Inlet example; This is what the Tzeporah / General Electric “climate policy” is doing to Canadian Watersheds. GE is the big money behind this … with JPMorgan, & the usual crowd ..

“Plutonic Power” is a local GE partner ..

The hydrocarbon cost of Tzeporah Berman’s scheme with General Electric to occupy 300 rivers and watersheds in British Columbia, including 17 rivers in the Toba watershed. First you do the feasibility studies: fly all kinds of engineers, hydrologists, biologists and potential investors around in helicopters a few dozen times, have them work up a detailed plan in well-lit gas-heated offices somewhere, and deliver your plan to govt/public so they can spend lots of time and energy deliberating and dismantling it. Once it’s all a GO, Phase 1 is to build new access or fix any existing roads/bridges, clear various sites and bring in a huge temporary camp facility on several barges. This is the one Pluto set up in Toba, which houses 300 in luxury, was purpose built and shipped from Kamloops… Add a 100KW diesel generator running 24/7 for a year too. Phase 2 is to log and clear turbine and penstock sites with conventional diesel equip. This next pic is the steep trench for Montrose penstock beside the McGyver-Kennedy waterfall, soon barely a trickle. It has a total 2000 m. vertical head. This is approx. 6′ diam steel pipe is laid in a trench that often has to be dynamited through rock, then buried, presumably revegetated later:

A later photo shows they had a slide/blowout near the base, so assume some work has to be repeated. I don’t know how to quantify energy/carbon expense, but it looks like some of this route is heli-access only, so that means some earth-moving machinery and penstock pipe is flown in by chopper, after it has all been barged up the inlet, along with oodles of diesel and such. Not sure where the 2m. diam D penstock pipe comes from (China?), but it’s about 12mm wall thickness, and is epoxy or poly-coated, and the 10m. pieces are double-welded together on-site with portable diesel-powered welders. About 3Km of pipe for each powerhouse. Bute will have 17 of these. Phase 3 is “adjustable dam” and intake- lots of diesel-powed terraforming and concrete:

Phase 4 is turbine/powerhouse construction – first lots of site work with heavy equip.

then Build reinforced concrete powerhouse with steel roof, untold amounts of specialty materials and copper, Pluto’s turbines are imported from Austria, electrical stuff from US.

This is East Toba Powerhouse – 2 turbines with total of 123MW capacity, annual output estimated at 465 GWh. The output of those turbines require stepping up in voltage- so add power substations/transformers. Are they still using PCB’s ?

Phase 5 is transmission corridor – or as Tzeppie says, using General Electric language, “the transmission backbone” – built with road-based equipment and helicopter, for each plant, some 150 Kms x 50m wide transmission corridor logged (a permanent clearcut):

Most of the timber is just left to rot because helicopter time is too expensive to retrieve it. Finally, General Electric and their partners will plant 30m-tall steel towers by helicopter every few hundred metres, with big ceramic insulators and 3 runs of transmission wire. The Bute transmission line will run all the way down to Saltery Bay /Jervis Inlet, where it plugs into the Cheekeye-Dunsmuir line.

Vancouver Media Co-op | http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/blog/macdonald/2824

Tzep calls for gentle tar sands, promotes GE

Tzeporah Berman is readying the ground to sell-out both Greenpeace and the anti-tar sands struggle… Berman is a master of publicity and is already setting the groundwork for future campaigns and betrayals, backroom deals and greenwashing the un-greenable. Since there is no such technology as “clean tar sands” anymore than clean coal, one must assume that this is right in line with why she is promoting the destruction of rivers in BC: to use them as “clean energy.” All members and donors to Greenpeace should IMMEDIATELY alert the organization that if she takes office they will pull all contributions to the organization that once had actual opposition to these kinds of massive destructive developments. Txeporah Berman will make deals with Suncor, in private backrooms. SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS, DO NOT MAKE THEM “FRIENDLY”.

Delores Broton: 30 years in the B.C. environmental movement, editor of the Watershed Sentinel for 15 years. One the most highly respected environmental voices in British Columbia. On the idea of Greenpeace hiring the person who betrayed the Canadian environmental movement:

“What were they thinking? Did they talk to anyone? Does Greenpeace do any due diligence?”

Bob Hunter (October 13, 1941–May 2, 2005) was a co-founder of Greenpeace in 1972. Hunter, the first President of Greenpeace, was a long-time campaigner for environmental causes. In 1971, the word “Greenpeace” hadn’t yet been coined.  Bob was a hippy journalist in Vancouver, a town which he described as having “the biggest concentration of tree-huggers, radicalized students, garbage-dump stoppers, shit-disturbing unionists, freeway fighters, pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites, condo killers, farmland savers, fish preservationists, animal rights activists, back-to-the-landers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists, and anti-spraying, anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita, in the world.”

This is the Greenpeace the world fell in love with.   This is the Greenpeace that changed the world with a real movement.  Give us back our old Greenpeace!

What can you do? Take Action! Write Greenpeace today.

Forward this email or write your own concerns and comments to the following people:

• Kumi Naidoo: kumi.naidoo@greenpeace.org | Executive Director, Greenpeace International
• Jessica Wilson: jessica.wilson@greenpeace.org
• Bruce Cox: Executive Director, Greenpeace Canada | cell: | bruce.cox@greenpeace.org
• Nigel Campbell: nigel.campbell@greenpeace.org
• Anne Dingwall: anne.dingwall@greenpeace.org |  Fundraising Director
• Phil Radford: phil.radford@greenpeace.org | Exec. Director, USA
• Jo Kuper: jo.kuper@greenpeace.org
• Martin Lloyd: martin.lloyd@greenpeace.org
• Gene Hashmi: gene.hashmi@greenpeace.org

“We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves” | Marquis De Vauvenargues, 1715-1747)

COP 15 – TckTckTck hoodwinked NGOs: bold demands sacrificed for PR coverage – PEJ News – Joan Russow

COP 15 – TckTckTck hoodwinked NGOs: bold demands sacrificed for PR coverage – PEJ News – Joan Russow – www.Climatechangecopenhagen.org

Did the many NGO groups that signed on to TckTckTck Campaign know what they were agreeing to? Were they aware of the corporate links to the Campaign? Do they know who owns the Trade Mark TckTckTck that they have been so dutifully promoting? Or do the NGOs care?
www.PEJ.org

SIGNIFICANT OMISSIONS IN TCKTCKTCK DEMANDS
In the TckTckTck Campaign for COP 15, they were calling for developed states to “Reduce developed country emissions by at least 40% by 2020. While most developed and developing states were calling for developed states to use 1990 as baseline, the TckTckTck Campaign did not have a baseline. Consequently what they were calling for was way below what developing states were demanding How could an NGO campaign have a percentage reduction without a base-line date. In the TckTckTck campaign demands it was stated: “Reduce developed country emissions by at least 40% by 2020” . Is that from 2009 levels? or Canadian 2006 levels, or US 2005 levels but not from what most of developing states wanted at least 45% from 1990 levels. Apart for calling for stabilization by 2015, there was no commitment proposed for subsequent years, such as [collectively reduce global emission by at least //[50] [85] 95 % from 1990 levels by 2050 (Chair’s December 11 draft) ]. The developing states were demanding that developed states reduce emissions by at least 95% below 1990 levels by 2050; TckTckTck campaign was silent on 2050 commitment. Key issues at COP 15 were the need for a common baseline such as 1990, and for developed states to commit to high percentage reduction of greenhouse gases from the 1990 baseline.

The PR CAMPAIGN BY HAVAS CORP AND ITS CORPORATE CONNECTIONS The Public Relations Campaign boasted at the 2009 ANA (Advertising) Annual Conference-The Masters of Marketing, David Jones, global chief executive officer, Havas Worldwide, spoke about a particularly important advertising program his agency recently created for the TckTckTck: Time for Climate Justice campaign. (the 2009 ANA Masters of Marketing Conference)
David Jones is global CEO of Havas Worldwide, running Euro RSCG Worldwide, Arnold Worldwide and all creative, marketing services and design companies throughout the global Havas network of 12,000 people and more than 250 offices. He is also the Director General of Havas.
And did the NGOs know that TckTckTck has corporate “partners” such as nuclear energy promoters: EDF and GDF Suez. (TckTckTck press release)
Also in the Press release, it is stated that Havas World wide incorporates EURO RSCG which has as its clients the Adventis and Novartis Biotech firms involved with Genetic engineering and biofuels. I contacted TckTckTck, and asked them to send me a list of their corporate clients. In response, I received what they described as a press release. In this release, it states that “the idea behind TckTckTck was to create a movement.. rather than a campaign, but a movement with a deadline. …the objective of the campaign was to make it become a movement that consumers, advertisers and the media would use and exploit.” Was this the perception by the corporation that the movement encompassing NGOs was to be a commodity to be used and exploited?
In the press release it mentions “Havas Worldwide incorporates the EURO RSCG”‘ EURO RSCG boast of clients such as Novartis and Adventis – biotech industries in Genetic engineering and biofuel (including the disastrous Jatropha).
Perhaps, at COP 15 biofuels and Nuclear energy which have often been proposed as solutions to climate change in violation of a principle that solutions should never be worse or equally bad as the problem they are intended to solve- were shrewdly promoted through their association with TckTckTck.

WHO OWNS THE TckTckTck TRADE MARK THAT NGOS HAVE BEEN PROMOTING AS BELONGING TO THE COP 15 It appears that on Monday, November 30, 2009, a U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for TckTckTck. This trademark is owned by Euro RSCG Worldwide, LLC, 350 Hudson Street, New York , 10014 .
The attorney or correspondent listed for TckTckTck is COLLEEN M. KEEGAN of DAVIS WRIGHT TREMAINE LLP, 1633 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, NY 10019 . The TckTckTck trademark is filed in the category of Advertising, Business & Retail Services . The description provided to the USPTO for TckTckTck is Advertising services; marketing services; advertising agency services, direct marketing advertising; market research; business marketing consulting; public relations services; media planning, buying and placement. The USPTO has given the TckTckTck trademark serial number of 77882811. The current status of the trademark is NEW APPLICATION – RECORD INITIALIZED NOT ASSIGNED TO EXAMINER.

Have the NGOs been duped into assisting Euro RSCG Worldwide In promoting a new trademark for its clients? Will there be a TckTckTck, campaign to strengthen the push for nuclear energy and biofuels which will delude the public into thinking that the campaign has the support of environmental and social justice NGOs?

CLAIM BY TCKTCKTCK THAT THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT CAMPAIGNS

Jason Mogus from the TckTckTck http://tcktcktck.org campaign noted that there was a distinction between two campaigns.

“First, the Tck campaign with corporate connections is actually a separate one from what I worked on, their website is http://timeforclimatejustice.org and ours is http://tcktcktck.org. Our campaign only had NGO’s involved and did not work with the EURO PR firm or had any other PR firms in leadership roles. It is easy to get confused as there were 2 separate campaigns but the one I worked on was the most high profile, had 220 NGO partners, and is the one most of you will have seen. “

Did Jason no know that the TckTckTck logo and campaign was registered by the EURO PR firm on November 30, 2009, and that even though it was a different campaign as he said, it was the same logo and the NGOs, in promoting TckTckTck were linked by association. The result is that the NGOs in his campaign will be giving legitimacy to the corporate campaign which is using the same logo. Is he not concerned about this?

Inspiring and will inspire you, learn more by exploring their sites.

LIST OF GROUPS THAT SIGNED ON to TckTckTck (FROM TckTckTck WEBSITE)
. 1Sky
· 350.org
· ACT Responsible
· ActionAid International
· Africa2Green
· Age of Stupid
· Alliance for Climate Education (ACE)
· Alpe Adria Green
· Amnesty International
· AMYCOS-ONGD
· Apollo Alliance
· AQVIVA
· Ashoka’s Youth Venture
· Association québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale (AQOCI)
· Atmosforests
· AVAAZ.org
· BeThatChange
· BirdLife International
· Botanic Gardens Conservation International
· Campus Progress
· CAN International
· Canadian Youth Climate Coalition
· Canadian Youth Climate Coalition – Powershift
· Carbon Danger
· Carbonfund.org
· CARE
· Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD)
· Centre for Social Markets
· China Dialogue
· Christian Aid
· Christian World Service
· CIDSE
· CIEDM: California Institute of Environmental Design & Management
· CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
· Climate Coalition (Belgium)
· Climate Counts
· Climate Justice Fast!
· Conservation International
· Consider Us
· Consumers International
· Copenhagen Climate Council
· Costa Rica Neutral
· CPAWS (Make Forests Count)
· Dana Mitra Lingkungan (Resource Foundation for Environment)
· David Suzuki Foundation
· Denmark.net
· Dogwood Initiative
· E3G
· Eco y Voz A.C. (Radio Mente Abierta)
· Eco-union
· EISI
· 350.org
· ACT Responsible
· ActionAid International
· Africa2Green
· Age of Stupid
· Alliance for Climate Education (ACE)
· Alpe Adria Green
· Amnesty International
· AMYCOS-ONGD
· Apollo Alliance
· AQVIVA
· Ashoka’s Youth Venture
· Association québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale (AQOCI)
· Atmosforests
· AVAAZ.org
· BeThatChange
· BirdLife International
· Botanic Gardens Conservation International
· Campus Progress
· CAN International
· Canadian Youth Climate Coalition
· Canadian Youth Climate Coalition – Powershift
· Canadians for Action on Climate Change
· Carbon Danger
· Carbonfund.org
· CARE
· Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD)
· Centre for Social Markets
· China Dialogue
· Christian Aid
· Christian World Service
· CIDSE
· CIEDM: California Institute of Environmental Design & Management
· CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
· Climate Coalition (Belgium)
· Climate Counts
· Climate Justice Fast!
· Conservation International
· Consider Us
· Consumers International
· Copenhagen Climate Council
· Costa Rica Neutral
· CPAWS (Make Forests Count)
· Dana Mitra Lingkungan (Resource Foundation for Environment)
· David Suzuki Foundation
· Denmark.net
· Dogwood Initiative
· E3G
· Eco y Voz A.C. (Radio Mente Abierta)
· Eco-union
· EISI
. Environmental Media Association
· Equilibrium
· Equiterre
· Ethical Consumer Magazine
· European Journalism Centre
· Faiths United for Sustainable Energy (FUSE)
· FAQDD (Fonds d’action québécois_pour le développement durable)
· Federation of Environmental and Ecological Diversity for Agricultural Revampment and Human Rights (FEEDAR & HR)
· Finance Alliance for Sustainable Trade International (FAST)
· Footprint Friends
· Footprint Network
· For My Sake! (Earth Reformers Foundation)
· France Nature Environment
· Friendship Ambassador Foundation
· Ghana National Youth Coalition on Climate Change (GNYCCC)
· Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)
· Global Green
· Global Humanitarian Forum
· Global Movement for Children
· Global voluntary Development Association (GVDA)
· Global Warming and Climate Change Initiatives for the International Youth Council
· GlobalGiving
· Goodness500
· GREEN Alpe Adria
· Green Thing
· Greenheart Project
· Greening the Beige
· Greenpeace International
· Grønn Hverdag (Green living)
· Healthcare Without Harm
· Helpage International
· Iceland Nature Conservation Association
· IndyACT – The League of Independent Activists
· INEX – International Network for Educational Exchange
· Interfaith Power and Light: Regeneration Project
· International Center for Sustainable Development & Environmental Studies (ICSDS)
· International Council for Adult Education
· International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
· International Federation of the Red Cross
· International Institute for Environment and Development
· International Tibet Support Network
· International Youth Council
· Jaringan Hijau Mandiri
· Julie’s Bicycle
· Kiko – Make the Rule
· Kiko Network
· Klima Klub
· Kyoto2 Support Group
· L’Ultimatum Climatique
· Make Poverty History
· MERCY Malaysia
· METIS Global Awareness Network
· Millennium ART
· Movement for Children and Youth Welfare
· Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC)
· NEKTARINA NPO
· New World Hope Organization
· Norwegian Church Aid
· Noticias Positivas
· “Ocean eXchange”> the GEO Project”
· OceanHealth.Org
· Oxfam GB
· Oxfam International
· Pacific Conference of Churches
· PASUMAI THAAYAGAM (Green Motherland)
· Peace and Collaborative Development Network
· Pensons Climat/ Think Climate
· People’s Climate Action
· People’s Initiative for Learning and Community Development (PILCD)
· Peopletech
· PGA Green
· Plan International
· Plant-for-the-Planet
· Practical Action
· Presencia Ciudadana
· Project Survival Pacific
· Rainforest Action Network
· Raising Awareness on Environment and Climate Change Program
· Raising Awareness on Environment and Climate Change Program (RAECP)
· Realizing Rights
· RESET – For A Better World
· Rock The Earth
· Sandbag Climate Campaign
· Save the Children
· Solar Generation
· Sri Lanka-United Nations Friendship Organisation (SUNFO)
· Stichting Dolphinmotion
· StopGlobalWarming.org
· Survival International
· Sustainable Environment & Ecological Development Society (SEEDS India)
· Sustainable Sanctuary Coalition of Greater Kansas City
· SustainUS’>www.climatecountdown.org””>SustainUS
· TakingITGlobal
· Team Earth
· Tearfund
· Tebtebba
· The Climate Institute
· The Converging World
· The Corporate Leaders’ Group on Climate Change
· The Green Initiative
· The Pachamama Alliance
· The Pew Trust
· The Rainforest Initiative
· The Women for a Change International Foundation
· This Place 09
· Trade Union Advisory Committee
· Transparency International
· Treehugger
· UN Seal the Deal
· Unión de Grupos Ambientalistas (Network of environmental groups)
· Union of Concerned Scientist
· Unite for Climate/UNICEF
· United Nations (Regional Information Centre for Western Europe) on Volunteers
· universe-projects international w.l.l
· US Climate Action Network (USCAN)
· Vitae Civilis
· Wechselwelle
· WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing)
· Wildlife Conservation Society
· Women’s Environment and Development Organization
· World Climate Community
· World Conference of Religions for Peace (WCRP)
· World Council of Churches
· World Mayors Council on Climate Change (WMCCC)
· World Resources Institute
· World Student Community for Sustainable Development
· World Vision
· World Vision Australia
· WWF International
· www.labor4sustainability.org/
· Xanvil – Cultura y Ecología
· Youth and United Nations Global Alliance (YUNGA)
· Youth Engagement in Sustainability (YES) Nepal
· Youth Partnership for Peace and Development

DO THE NGOS EVEN CARE ABOUT BEING ASSOCIATED WITH SUCH A CAMPAIGN
The question remains that if the NGOs are made aware (i) that they had agreed to emission reduction without the baseline of 1990, (ii) that among many corporate “partners” were key nuclear and biofuel/genetic engineering corporations, and (iii) that the TCKTCKTCK brand or logo that they have promoted could now have a corporate life of its own; would the NGOs now withdraw their support for TCKTCKTCK.

EYES WIDE SHUT | TckTckTck exposé

Sleeping with the Enemy …

EYES WIDE SHUT | TckTckTck exposé

The mainstream environmental movement no longer inspires nor leads society to an enlightened existence – it simply bows down to the status quo.

Who Really Deserves the Fossil Fool Award? TckTckTck or us?

The largest climate change campaign in the world is in bed with the world’s most powerful corporations.

In this HAVAS press release TCK HAVAS PAGER we obtained Havas announces their TckTckTck campaign launch. In this release it states: “The objective was to make it become a movement that consumers, advertisers and the media would use and exploit”.  After the background text on the TckTckTck campaign itself, the release goes on to state in ‘the results’ the following:

The open-­?source campaign has been adopted around the world with everything from massive stunts in Central Park
by Oxfam, to ad agency Y&R in Brazil creating a Tck Tck Tck TV commercial, to advertisers like EDF including the TckTckTck logo on one of their latest TV commercials, to huge global press coverage.

It then lists the partners that have come on board thus far.

From the release:

The following companies who have already come on board as partners includes Galeries Lafayette, Virgin Group, Yahoo! Music, iTunes, Google, Pernod Ricard, EDF, Microsoft,  Zune, YouTube, USA Today, National Magazines, HSBC, M&S, Uniqlo, Lloyds Bank, MySpace, MTV, Bo Concept Japan K.K., Volvo, Kipa Turkey, Claro Argentina, Peugeot, NTV, Universal, Tesco, Sina.com, GDF Suez, Centrica, Oxfam, New Zealand Wine Company, 350.org, Handbag.com, Avaaz.org, Lesinrockuptibles, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, EMap, Greenpeace, Commensal, The Atlantic, Fast Company, News Limited, Tesla, Wired Magazine, and RFM Radio.

And this is not the full list of partners.

Who is EDF?

EDF, the world’s leading nuclear power utility, operates a French nuclear fleet consisting of 58 reactors spread over 19 different sites.

Here is a little information you might like to know about another partners –  GDF Suez – that I found on the  ‘World Nuclear News‘ website:

GdF-Suez and Total secure nuclear stake

05 May 2009

Oil and gas firms will have a substantial interest in the second new large nuclear reactor to be built in France. GdF-Suez is to take a one-third stake and share it with Total.

We are in fact sleeping with the enemy.

In the press release it also states “Havas Worldwide incorporates the EURO RSCG whose clients include Novartis and Adventis – both biotech industries in genetic engineering and biofuel  including the disastrous Jatropha. One must ask if this could be why biofuels and nuclear were not really listed high on the menu at COP 15 even though these two false  “solutions” are equally bad if not worse than the problem they are intended to solve.

The Tck Tck Tck: Time for Climate Justice campaign was also developed by GHF & as mentioned above, Euro RSCG Worldwide.  Clients of Euro RSCG include Air France, Kraft, McDonalds, Volvo, Evian, IBM, Nokia, Starbucks, etc. etc. You may recognize some of these corporations from the massive advertising campaign labeled ‘Hopenhagen’ which incited cries of greenwash from the likes of Naomi Klein, organizations and activists from across the planet.  The Hopenhagen campaign was unveiled with the support of dozens of agency, media, and brand partners to do one thing – “rebrand a city”. See the friends of ‘Hopenhagen’ here.

As it turns out, Havas the creator of TckTckTck, and Euro RSCG were also the initial partners and creators of the infamous Hopenhagen campaign.

‘The self proclaimed Masters of Marketing & Growth” is Havas whose clients include those such as Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, BP, Statoil, Gasnatural, and on and on the list goes.

November 12th 2009: “Over 200 partner organizations have joined this fight for climate justice, including the World Wildlife Fund, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and the National Resource Defense Council. With close to 3 million people already signing up to declare their support for climate justice, the stunning advertising created for this campaign is positive proof that our industry can help to make the world a better place.”

Like the corporations greenwashing products, the practice of NGOs not only greenwashing corporations but partnering with them is quickly becoming ‘normalized’. While people continue to die, the corporate elites sit back and laugh. Surely this is not climate justice. In the past our organization has used the independent firm ‘Fair Trade Media’ when we needed graphics for campaigns we created. Surely such organizations exist around the world?

The mainstream environmental movement is no longer led by visionaries, thinkers, activists. (Was it at one time? I would like to think so.) It is clearly being shaped and defined by advertising firms. From top to bottom – it is being led by advertising executives – people whose expertise is ensuring corporate profit and growth at every quarter. I would argue that the mainstream environmental movement is no longer based on truth. In the past activism was based on what was ‘right’ both ethically and morally – not on what the polls stated public perception would be. Today, polling is now done by most of the bigger NGOs before they message anything. Imagine the information Euro RSCG could collect through the TckTckTck campaign to give their other clients valuable insight of the millions of concerned citizens showing interest for the environment. Sponsors of TckTckTck include carbon offset companies which are being aggressively opposed by true Climate Justice groups, therefore, beyond watering down of the term “climate justice,” there has been a corporate takeover of the political space on the climate crisis including, even, the hijacking of the language and framing. Simply put – the climate justice concept is now being used by corporations and institutions for greenwashing their market-oriented policies.

The mainstream environmental movement no longer inspires nor leads society to an enlightened existence – it simply bows down to the status quo. Conveniently there is always an envelope for a donation – this could perhaps be considered a note of gratitude from the citizen for allowing them to remain in denial yet still feel as though they are doing their part. Or citizens may simply choose to accessorize with a TckTckTck pin to show their dedication to the cause. The tck tck tck pins from the ‘store’ section are made with nickel (mined) in a ‘care certified’ sweatshop facility in China. Their associated carbon emissions have been ‘offset’ by TckTckTck partners. (Just pray that you personally never have to work in a mine nor a sweatshop) What happened to the cries of ‘leave it in the ground!’ on the streets of Copenhagen?

All ENGOs are vastly aware that the industrialized nations are in a death-spiral brought about by the capitalist, consumptive and corporate domination of society, which is suicidal.  They all know this – yet we never hear mention of system change nor real climate justice targets from tck tck tck or the mainstream environmental NGOs. We are in what scientists call the 6th extinction. It is not only species that are at great risk. Our humanity, our empathy and truth itself are all on the endangered list.

Copied from the TckTckTck site:

Who We Are

The ‘tck tck tck – time for climate justice’ campaign was developed by the Global Humanitarian Forum and Euro RSCG Worldwide to re-frame the climate crisis as a human problem and to publically mobilise action towards the UNFCCC talks (COP15) in Copenhagen in December of this year. This campaign is designed to be open-source and can be taken up and used by every and anyone who wants to publically campaign towards delivering a strong and just global climate deal at Copenhagen. If you don’t have something you want, or think there’s something we need, do get I contact at campaign. After all, in the word’s of our climate ally Desmond Tutu ‘This is your campaign’. Founded in 2007, the Global Humanitarian Forum is a new international organization personally led by Kofi Annan working to build a stronger global community for overcoming humanitarian challenges.

Our Vision

A world where the full potential of the global society is harnessed for eradicating human suffering.

Euro RSCG Worldwide is global in the truest sense of the word. Their offices resound with different languages, resonate with cultures and colours, and pulse with the beats of 75 countries. The largest global agency as measured by total number of global accounts, according to the 2008 Advertising Age Global Marketers Report, Euro RSCG Worldwide has 233 offices across the globe that specialize in advertising, digital, marketing services, healthcare, PR and corporate communications.

But wait – it gets a lot worse

Who are ‘The Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change’? This is one of the TckTckTck partners. You can find it on the main tck tck tck site if you look hard enough. It’s a bit buried under ‘partner’ links. The groups members include corporations such as Shell, Unilver, Lloyds Banking Group, Fortis Bank, Thames Water, etc. etc. Signatories include 1000+ companies from across the globe including Coca Cola, RBC, BP, Nestle, etc. etc. etc.

So now, unknowingly, TckTckTck partners have now been teamed up so to speak with the very same corporations we challenge in our everyday campaigns. Many of these are the same corporations that greenwash summits and caused such social injustice and environmental degradation in the first place and continue to lobby and bully to maintain the status quo of corporate dominance today. The Rio Summit led to a series of challenging negotiations whose purpose was to protect the earth and improve life for its most impoverished inhabitants. Unfortunately, that purpose was undermined by the Summit’s failure to confront corporate power in any meaningful way. The failure in Copenhagen has effectively legitimized climate genocide.

Prospects for human and other living species do ultimately hinge on whether or not global capitalism is replaced by an entirely different economic system. A system based on fairness and ethics where the wealthy elites do not exploit nor prey on their fellow human beings and our shared natural environment. Where associated producers and consumers democratically plan and harmonize their own economic activities based upon reasonably accurate information on the consequences of different options. The sooner that such a change happens, the happier, the healthier and the safer both society and the environment will be.

Climate change is the worst consequence of a wrong and unfair economical system which is killing hundreds millions of hungry people. Yet again, one must emphasize, the mainstream NGOs do not speak of this. Is it any wonder why these NGOs never make mention of system change itself when the same advertising firms which they contract are in a feeding frenzy – feeding from the very hands of the largest multinational corporations on the planet.

Needless to say we have asked TckTckTck to REMOVE us as a partner.

Strawberry fields

Working with mainstream NGOs has left a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps their must be a separate category for compromised NGOs which we could label. This process was described, in remarkably stark terms, by 1960s-era campus radical leader James Kunen in his 1968 memoir The Strawberry Statement. Therefore I am going to put out the label ‘strawberries’ which could be coined to identify these groups found in strawberry fields where nothing is real and where living is easy with eyes closed. You can see how the corporate entities and the environmental lobby are now working together hand in hand as they dance down the yellow brick road. A large sector of the green movement has lost so much integrity that this term ‘strawberry’ can now apply to many. Many climate justice groups now feel that this compromised part of the environmental movement should no longer be welcomed by the movement. The allure of “success” and the power of the dollar have seduced the strawberries. They belong with the industry, not with us. The corporations have become so incredibly strong and organized – we now need to download ‘lobby guides’ just to get a grasp of who’s who.

Yet – this is not new. [1]As previously mentioned above, this process was described, in remarkably stark terms, by 1960s-era campus radical leader James Kunen in his 1968 memoir The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary. One of Kunen’s comrades in the Marxist Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had been approached by representatives of the Business International Round Tables, who “tried to buy up a few radicals.” “These men are the world’s leading industrialists and they convene to decide how our lives are going to go,” wrote Kunen. “They offered to finance our demonstrations in Chicago. We were also offered ESSO [i.e., Rockefeller Foundation] money. They want us to make a lot of radical commotion so they can look more in the center as they move to the left.” Jerry Kirk, who had also been involved in the SDS, as well as the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, gave an even more candid description of the scissors strategy in testimony before the House and Senate Internal Security Panels following his 1969 break with the revolutionary left. “Young people have no conception of the conspiracy’s strategy of pressure from above and pressure from below,” testified Kirk. “[The radical activists] have no idea that they are playing into the hands of the Establishment they claim to hate. The radicals think they’re fighting the forces of the super rich, like Rockefeller and Ford, and they don’t realize that it is precisely such forces which are behind their own revolution, financing it, and using it for their own purposes.” In fact, the “super-rich” tax-exempt foundations devote substantial amounts of their wealth to the environmental movement to gain their own ends.

The acknowledgment that the heads of states of the industrialized nations have no intention whatsoever of saving us from catastrophic climate change left me exhausted and deep in thought. Of course one didn’t have to go to Copenhagen to see the corporatization and commodification of climate change close up – it was here all along. We watched the mainstream NGOs become embedded with the corporations. Yet, no one yet really wants to step outside the mainstream ‘NGO circle’. There is a hierarchy of power with the mainstream environmental movement and everyone wants to be in the ‘inner circle’. Mainstream NGOs do not want leaders but only followers – therefore it is difficult to get into the circle. Visionaries are seen as threats to ‘the campaign’. Low level staff & volunteers are in the outer circle trying to get in. Few will say anything against the ‘inner circle’ because then they will never get in. In effect they are muzzled unless they wish to be blacklisted or ignored.

Today Monbiot wrote an excellent article titled ‘Consumption Hell’. He asks: “So how do we break this system? How do we pursue happiness and well-being rather than growth? I came back from the climate talks Copenhagen depressed for several reasons, but above all because, listening to the discussions at the citizens’ summit, it struck me that we no longer have movements; we have thousands of people each clamouring to have their own visions adopted. We might come together for occasional rallies and marches, but as soon as we start discussing alternatives, solidarity is shattered by possessive individualism. Consumerism has changed all of us. Our challenge is now to fight a system we have internalised.”

Monbiot is in the circle therefore he is heard. He does not have to clamour for his ideas to be heard. Perhaps it is not possessive individualism people seek in the environmental movement but only representation and a voice in a movement being shaped by wealthy advertising executives, instead of the activists on the front lines who live and breathe the cause.  The visionaries could be found exhausted along the walls of the packed Klima Forum during COP15.  Any NGOs with a grain of vision or integrity should be seeking these people out to replace the  advertising executives that do not represent true climate justice let alone understand what it really means.   The mainstream environmental climate justice movement is a façade. It is fake. There is no truth.  It is not about changing the system – it is little more than sleek advertising and high end videos of people dancing on beaches. Images such as Bono & Oprah running on the sand hand in hand with ‘Red’ brand iPods & Gap t-shirts. Shop to save the world! Dance on the beach to save the climate!

Climate Change is a bitch of a campaign because the more you understand the science – the more you become not only alienated from NGOs, but alienated from your own family and friends and society as a whole whose entire existence is now based on consumption. When one takes a position based on truth, morals and ethics one risks further alienating ones self from NGOs and fellow campaigners. Jiddu Krishnamurti stated “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”What more can be said. Our society is sick and yet we all go on pretending this way of life can be maintained. Compromised NGOs have been most complicit in this messaging. Everything we need to live has been graciously given to us – yet we destroy it as we simultaneously destroy ourselves. We are insatiable.

The mass greenwashing from corporations is hard enough to fight. Why must the true climate justice movement tolerate the strawberry NGOs that only help them protect their corporate interests – that being corporate profit, at the expense of our shared natural environment and life itself.

Dr. Hansen, top climate scientists, denounces ‘Greenwash’ in advance of Copenhagen

Bill C-311 – My first taste of NGO denialism

Bill C-311 was being pushed in Canada. In the fall there was a big push on Bill C-311 by Greenpeace Canada under the KyotoPlus campaign, the Sierra Club and others larger NGOs. As I continued to immerse myself into the climate change science, particularly the feedback mechanisms Bill C-311 became more and more of deep concerned to me. The targets were incredibly weak based on science from years ago that has since become completely irrelevant. The bill may have been progressive at the time however, this was no longer the case. Of particular help during this time was my correspondence with Clive Hamilton and access to an excellent lecture. I began to believe (and stress) that if this bill passed, instead of being beneficial – it could instead be incredibly detrimental to have such a bill locked in. If passed it would be reviewed once every five years which also terrified me as the science continues to accelerate at rates which even frighten the scientists. In my naïveté, I was certain once I spoke to the NGOs engaged with this campaign (CPAWS, Suzuki, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Pembina, etc.) they would agree the targets needed to be adjusted.

My communications were met with a deafening sound of silence. It became very clear that no one wished to engage in this dialouge. It is like what Bill McKibben stated – my questions pushing on true climate targets had labeled me as a ‘skunk at the garden party’. There was one exception – the campaigner from Council of Canadians who I know personally from my involvement with Council of Canadians did respond. To be fair, it is difficult for an energy campaigner (or anyone else for that matter) to get a grasp on the reality of climate change quickly. However, she at least showed interest and concern. They continued to support the KyotoPlus campaign – however by December it came with a qualifier that science was now calling for 40% emissions cuts rather than the KyotoPlus demand of 25%.

I’m waiting to see which, if any, larger NGO will lead the movement by backing the demands and targets of those most vulnerable clearly voiced at COP15 by the G77 and ALBA. I believe it may well be Maude Barlow’s Council of Canadians although I am not certain. We will find out soon enough. Will real NGOs please step forward?

Whether intentional or unintentional the fact is that weak, passive campaigns give support to passivity amongst Canadians where we already struggle against peak apathy and social bankruptcy in a culture of climate change denial all drowned out by the relentless consumption. Supporting targets that will ensure the deaths of billions is not climate justice. It is that simple. Such messaging allows citizens to believe that what they are calling for is more than adequate when nothing is further than the truth. Yet, such campaigns continue to be pushed in Canada and the U.S. Why? When a campaign collects over a hundred thousand signatures the campaign becomes more valuable than the very lives the campaign was to designed to protect in the first place. Protect the brand at all costs.

Welcome to the TckTckTck ‘Climate Insider’ list – managed by communication & marketing firms

I am on two main climate lists. The first is the ‘Climate Insiders’ list. I refer to as the ‘elitist list’ when I speak of it to other activists. The second is the ‘climate justice network’ which gives me hope and continues to inspire. The second list is as real as the blood pumping through the veins of the brilliant minds which contribute to it. Grassroots groups, writers, etc. from all over the world contribute valuable insight.

The greatest tragedy of the failure of COP15 is in fact the fallacy of the mainstream NGO community itself. For the most part – the big players (many on the climate insider list) have become complicit in blocking real progress on climate change. I will stop here and add that there are also many on the list are well intentioned and many on the list are ethical and voice true climate justice ethics.

Our organization joined at the beginning of October 2009. After the launch, it quickly became a list of not only the biggest mainstream NGOs of the world, writers , journalists, etc. – but a list saturated with marketing strategists and communications persons. I received my first post from on 10/27/2009. At present there are approx. 350 people / organizations on this list.

TckTckTck … STRIKE ONE

What at first seemed like an excellent list to discuss climate topics quickly became nothing more than a closely monitored list of communications shaped by the marketing strategists that controlled it. Communications regarding climate change science quickly fizzled out for the most part and a list evolved centered around strategic communications and messaging. As I followed the posts something very disturbing became very evident very quickly. It was clear that very few understood the real science or they understood it and insisted on passive targets and messaging anyway. I was not certain which one it was and when I asked the question I again was answered with the deafening sound of silence.

My first communication sent out November 10th was titled: ‘Strategies for Copenhagen & Beyond’. I questioned that although we (referring to the movement) are not psychologists; we are the people who work on the front lines. I argued we need to trust ourselves. I voiced the question as to why we are letting strategists, etc. control the messaging. I attached two articles: Fear is Good & Transition Plan. This communication resulted in my account being moderated from that point on. When I posted anything it would disappear into cyberspace. I edited my post and my edited version was not published. So instead I sent it directly to the recipients of the list using the bcc field. I was immediately informed by a ‘communications person / moderator’ that what I was did (reaching out to others on the list that I had received messages from directly rather than using the moderated list) was illegal by the laws of Canada and the US and I needed to stop immediately. Ironically, it was signed ‘in solidarity’ but with threats of legal action from a communications firm I really didn’t have faith he even knew what the word solidarity meant. It seems that today solidarity is a union expression and at least that movement means it within its own ranks. The word solidarity within the mainstream environmental movement has become a mirage. Simply put by my friend Roy – ‘ad hoc alliances and temporary places to lean on’.

Relying on the environmental organizations’ movement is futile. It will be the citizen groups who will move politicians – primarily because their community members are respected and considered intelligent enough to understand real issues. They are given truth even if harsh and not spoon fed lies to make them feel better while the earth burns.

Another communication person ‘managing’ the list responded to me in a similar hostile manner. I had not expected the marketing people to be supportive of my ideas so I cannot say I was that surprised by their reaction. What surprised me was the fact that the controls and shaping of our campaigns have been taken from activists, given to NGOs who have contracted them out to communications and marketing firms. Communicopia happen to be a client of Fission Strategy. The more one digs the more embedded things become. An inquiry will result in a reply from the Hoggan firm cc’d to a person from Communicopia. Communicopia also lists BC Hydro as a client as well as Greenpeace Canada and tck tck tck.

I did receive support from two NGOs. This is the post I received from a 350 person:

@elleprovocateur per climate list: thank you for your post! It helped hone our focus here as we build toward COP15 action!2:20 PM Nov 11thfrom web

‘Be That Change’ shared offered an articulate response supporting such strategy and wished to support “deal-centred goals as outlined spectacularly comprehensively” in the communication. He ended reaching out to the list with “Let us know how we can help”. There was no response. After this very few of my posts were ever published to my knowledge. When I asked why no one would ever reply.

TckTckTck believes they have introduced a new organizing model, ‘the Open Campaign’, where organizations or individuals can use the TckTckTck branding for use in their campaigns to educate and encourage their supporters. In reality, the TckTckTck ‘open’ campaign controlled the Copenhagen dialogue and the ugly truth is the fact that it is directly linked with many advertising firms whose clients have been sabotaging any progress on the fight against climate change for the last thirty years. Advertising CEOs set the agenda for Copenhagen. One must wonder if any of these advertising / public relation firms receive corporate funding of any kind.

TckTckTck … STRIKE TWO

ENSURE THAT GLOBAL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS PEAK WITHIN THE NEXT 8 YEARS AS THE SCIENCE DEMANDS.

Our organization was generously offered the opportunity to participate is what I assumed was an incredibly expensive full page ad that would be carried in several newspapers during the first day of COP15. We almost signed on. It was only when we noticed within a sentence within this statement which read: ‘ENSURE THAT GLOBAL GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS PEAK WITHIN THE NEXT 8 YEARS AS THE SCIENCE DEMANDS’ that we tried to sound the alarms. This ad would run in the full-page black and white ad in the Financial Times on December 7thas well as Dec 12/13 and Dec 14 and the International Herald Tribune on Dec 7.

This sentence within the statement translated to the citizens that we can continue business as usual for another 8 years – an incredibly dangerous message to citizens of the world. It read as though the corporations themselves endorsed it. The message would be endorsed by trusted NGOs – approx. 200 NGOs it total. In solidarity, we urged everyone who had signed this statement ask for this sentence to be to be changed or omitted. Small island states were asking for a minimum of 45-50% reductions within ten years based on a baseline of 1990 baseline. So how could NGOs convey to the public the false message that we must peak within 8 years?

Our communication (more like a plea) continued to explain how this was a misguided and dangerous message to convey. Again – it was met with a resounding silence. There are too many followers and too few leaders. TckTckTck sent our concerns to the ‘Nerve Centre’ which has never responded.

TckTckTck … STRIKE THREE

Don’t rock the boat or you get thrown off

On the Friday night before Cop15 another communication firm handling the media accreditation for TckTckTck informed me that I would no longer have accreditation – even though it had already been approved weeks before through tck tck tck. In this post in the Tyee the same communications firm (Hoggan) that revoked my accreditation is in question. The Sierra Club of Canada reprints this expose article on their website here. This is the same Hoggan who recently wrote ‘climate cover up’ based on research shared on his Desmog Blog.  Grassroots organizations along with Friends of the Earth and others froze outside and risked arrest while other NGOs gave awards at lavish Galas for those who continue who continue to support destroying our shared environment in the name of profit. This is the same person who is the chair of the David Suzuki foundation whose communications firm clients include BC Hydro. This firm shows as giving money to the Suzuki foundation in the 2007 – 2008 annual report. They are listed in the ‘Suzuki Leadership Circle of 10,000 & 99,999.00. David Suzuki himself also is very generous donating in the status circle of 100,000 – 249,999.

This past week Suzuki was recipient of BC Fossil of the Decade Award along with Pembina, BC Sustainable Energy Association, Sierra Club of BC, and POWER UP/ FOREST ETHICS. A day earlier the excellent blog ‘Climate and Capitalism’ posted an article titled: ‘Pale Greens Honor BC Climate Vandals – For some, a tiny tax outweighs massive environmental destruction.’ It states that premiere GordonCampbell, during COP15 received an ‘Economy Wide Carbon Pricing’ award from Tzeporah Berman of PowerUp Canada, one of ten of Canada’s best funded “environmental groups” that endorsed the award, presented at a gala recognizing “acts of climate leadership” by municipal and provincial governments across Canada. Other award endorsers were the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, ForestEthics, the Green Energy Act Alliance, the Pembina Institute, TckTckTck, and WWF Canada. So while grassroots organizations along with Friends of the Earth and others froze outside and risked arrest other NGOs gave an award at a lavish Gala for those who continue to support destroying our shared environment in the name of profit.

The more you engage, the deeper you dig, the uglier it gets. When I asked Power Up how Pembina’s ‘Green Learning Institute’ can be successful when funded by oil money I was again met with deafening silence. The Pembina Green Learning Centre has a list of founding members that will make your head spin. Their sponsors are found here.

Engineers without Borders is funded by Shell Canada. Most recently a friend of mine belonging to this organization asked his group if someone from Shell could be invited to a panel discussion to speak to the social abuses, murders, poverty, corruption and environmental degradation that continue to proliferate in the Niger Delta under Shell’s watch. His idea was met with that of a resounding no way in hell. He was told in a matter of fact way that this was not possible because EWB receives funding from Shell. Therefore they cannot place Shell in such a hot seat. Enough said.

Copenhagen | Reality hits home | CAN in the hot seat

In an excellent article by Alex Evans he asks the poignant question: Why are environmental NGOs pushing for a later peak emissions year than the IPCC? Luckily somehow on the ‘insider’ list had enough sense to post this that was not being moderated (yet). The writer states that although global emissions must peak between 2000 and 2015 and that even though the chair of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri has also said that 2015 is the deadline, astonishingly, the main federation of environmental NGOs – the Climate Action Network – says that any time up to 2017 is fine. WWF International agree. TckTckTck used to say 2017 too (as noted when they published their policy position); they’ve subsequently revised their target to 2015, but still have documents on their website using the old date.

He added a sample letter one could use writing to eight members of the CAN network (below) but added; “let’s at least give the body representing most of the world’s NGOs at the Copenhagen climate conference the right to explain the process by which they choose their targets and policy”.

Dear Matthias, Karim, Ulriikka, Tomas, Erica, Mechthild and Vanessa,Climate Policy expert Alex Evans has pointed out an error of fundamental importance in your Climate Change Campaign message that requires urgent redress. His short article at the linked page spells it out. Basically, it seems that Climate Action Network (and WWF) are demanding a dangerously insufficient peak date for carbon emissions.

Needless to say, if we get the demand wrong, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot from the offset. I will be highlighting this story for those organisations I support; however I thought it important to begin at the heart of the movement and I now hope that you, as the engine behind the agglomeration of NGO’s on the climate case, will act swiftly and ensure that the correct message is communicated at Copenhagen.

Delaying global peaking up to 2017 has no rationale and is a crime. To no surprise I have never seen a response from CAN on why they uphold policies that one can only imagine Shell and Exxon laughing in glee at such a statement. Yes – CAN is on the insiders list. David Turnball has written in himself. The article continues:

Be very clear: this isn’t just hair-splitting. Once the peak date for emissions slides beyond 2015 and towards 2020, according to the IPCC, we’re heading for a world that’s not 2.0-2.4 degrees C warmer, but 2.4-2.8 degrees C. That is what the environmental NGOs are arguing for. Shortly before they spend a fortnight calling everyone else at the Copenhagen summit ”fossil of the day“. It’s breathtaking.

So, if you can’t make it to the summit but still want a way to take action and make your voice heard ahead of Copenhagen, how about this. First thing on Monday, get in touch with any environmental NGOs you support. Ask them their position on the global peak emissions date. And if it’s any later than 2015, then cancel your subscription.

I’m not kidding. Policymakers aren’t the only ones at Copenhagen who need to be held to account. If the green NGOs can’t get their figures right on something this fundamental, this basic (even as the development NGOs manage it just fine) then they need to – what’s that phrase from the Bali summit? –”leave it to the rest of us, please, get out of the way”.

What both TckTckTck and CAn should have told the public was this – We peaked already! Global emissions for 2009 were down 3% on 2008 which is down 6% on projected emissions (International Energy Agency Nov 2009). So why on Earth would we want them to rise again for several years? We need not and must not delay any more years to peaking.

Today’s atmospheric CO2 concentration is the highest in the past one million years (Global Carbon Project) and probability the past 20 million years (NOAA) The rate of CO2 increase is 14,000 times anything ever recorded in geologic history. (J Hansen) Every year we delay peaking we add more than 8.5 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere. As 20% of all CO2 emissions last in the atmosphere 1000 years delaying peaking is asking for runaway climate change.

Below is the Nov 09 Global Carbon Project carbon budget – which was not (to my knowledge) but should have been tabled at COP15 as it is internationally recognized.  In the graph it shows that the Unites States & Australia budget (& I will assume Canada) for carbon emissions  until 2050 will be used up by 2019.  So why does CAN state that we need to peak within eight years and why did TckTckTck INSIST in the full page ad targeting the American audience to include the statement that  emissions must peak in in eight years if their own revised target is 2015?  Yes – it is astonishing.  If we had true climate justice, could such misinformation be considered criminally negligent?

Real Post COP15 targets need not be discussed on TckTckTck – POSTING DENIED

On December 26th I wrote the following post to the list:

The G77 & Bolivia (At COP15) have called for targets of 1C, 52% by 2017, 65% by 2020, 80% by 2030 & well above 100 by 2050. There can be no denying of what targets those most vulnerable have asked us to support. Can I ask which of the large NGOs on this list have the integrity to back/demand the targets asked of us by those who are counting on our support? I hope everyone will all be on the same page with this.

I received this on December 30th: Your message to the ClimateInsider group has been rejected, due to a violation of the List Rules:

ClimateInsider List Rules:

1) All messages are expected to be private, off-the-record and not for distribution unless explicitly stated otherwise.

2) Messages should focus on climate content and action of relevance to a diverse global audience. Please do not promote highly local or niche campaigns/activities.

3) All messages must be personalized by a list member. Do not send press releases or advisories without a note explaining why you think it is of value to the list.

4) Any messages that contain ad hominem attacks, are highly off-topic, or automated may lead to your account being moderated.

5) If someone forwards you a email off-list or violates one of these provisions, please contact the administrator (r___________s).

It’s so unbelievable one could almost laugh if it were not so tragic. One apparently cannot speak about climate change targets on a climate change ‘insiders’ list. A climate change list moderated and censored by a slew of marketing strategists. We may as well have bar codes stamped on the backs of our necks.

Meanwhile back in Canada …

Back in Canada we had our own mystery unfolding. A handful of activists – most connected to NGOs were mobilizing under Climate Justice Now – said to be a grassroots citizens organization – were mobilizing direct actions across Canada. There were a handful, including myself communicating via Skype and email. I was shocked when after the first action – the media release referred to false targets under the KyotoPlus campaign. I was shocked because grass roots activists usually will not compromise when it comes to the truth. I called one of the members who and expressed my concern. This person stated they absolutely supported my position and concern and suggested I bring it up on the call that day which I did. I was a lone voice on the call. No one including this person – supported my concern. The group suggested they wished to focus on climate justice alone and not targets. The reality is that you cannot have true climate justice without acknowledging and supporting true climate targets. The following action did not refer to any specific targets. Yet – the next action the false targets reappeared again. After COP15 – one of the group members shared with me some excellent ideas which were dismissed outright by CAN.  I am quite certain that the ‘citizens’ mobilization groups were actually created or under a formal or informal CAN or Greenpeace Canada umbrella or both. This would explain the false targets being placed within the media releases and other odd occurrences that took place. The people that were involved in these actions are to be commended.  They were courageous, made sacrifices and took risks that most are not willing to make.  They were absolutely well intentioned.  I believe they would have been much more effective if there were not outside influences, which in my opinion, there were.  One odd occurrence involved a direct action that was to take place in Toronto was given the red light as an unidentified NGO insisted such an action would hurt progress they felt their campaign was making. The only climate campaign I am aware of that was taking place at this time in Toronto was “Mothers Against Climate Change’ which was developed under Environmental Defence and Forest Ethics. Both NGOs are two of six which just received the colossal greenwashing award of 2010.

On the Upside. There absolutely is a real environmental movement underway

One of the many brilliant minds from the ‘climate justice now’ list is Tord Björk. In a communication regarding the Black Block he summarized the situation as follows: “The problem is that there is not only privileged white middle class in the ranks of some identity political radical groups, they also filling up the ranks of NGOs. Maybe in 2002 in Florence old style working class mass party disciplined behavior still was possible. Today the Italian mass parties are destroyed. In Denmark they were a long time ago. What you have is party headquarters with professional media staff. What you also have in Denmark to be drastic are organisations without activists and activists without organisations. And the ones fully committed to a Southern agenda are the activists it seems. FoE Sweden has been trying to address these issues for half a year without getting response from either CJA, CJN or Danish organisations until recently when things have been a bit better.”

I agree wholeheartedly. How many times have I recognized that those in paid positions start at 9am and quit when the clock strikes 5pm. These are perhaps people with degrees in particular fields, with marketing expertise among other qualifications … but for most – the blood of an activist, a true eco-socialist, does not pump through their hearts. For most – they possess no passion, they do not live and breathe the pain of our planets last dying breath nor do they feel the injustices; the pain and the suffering of those most vulnerable and those most exploited and oppressed. I know there are individuals on the climate insider list and everywhere who deeply want to contribute and do not realize there are true activists out there all communicating and sharing ideas in one common space.

Greenpeace Australia-Pacific has the integrity to be one of the only organizations on the planet calling for the necessary targets of zero in their excellent report ‘Final Warning – The World’s Rapid Descent into Runaway Climate Change‘ released in March of 2009.  Yet in Canada – we call for nothing like this. Why? Because the campaigns now are based on what people want to hear and Canadians are not yet really feeling the impacts of climate change.  In Canada, the majority of consumers (formerly known as citizens) are addicted to their SUVs, their drive-thrus, and relentless shopping.  We have been successfully dumbed down, stupified and corporatized to consume.  Peak apathy is the national anthem.  Too few noticed and too few had any objections.  Why is it we can call a national emergency on H1N1, but we do not have the political will to do the same for our climate change emergency which ensures certain death to billions?  The answer is easy – just follow the money.

Most are happy to be complicit to the system that is destroying us. Anyone who tells them different can fuck off. So in order to give the citizens they want – a campaign that does not challenge their lifestyle in any way – a blessing to cling to the status quo enjoyed by many – compromised NGOs continue to lie to their members and lie to themselves. ‘Something is better than nothing’ is the preferred language – or – ‘it’s a good start’. But are little steps better than nothing when little steps mean certain death? Why are many of the large NGOs today so wealthy? I would argue that a huge surplus of money has successfully corrupted many NGOs. The surplus of wealth has destroyed imagination and creativity. It had successfully stifled if not destroyed risk taking for most and most tragically it has killed off integrity if not our humanity.

It’s past time we take Alex’s advice and reconsider who to support and who not to support. We will be supporting ALBA, The G77 (see video -part 1 of 5- of Lumumba Di-Aping below) and the Small Island States along with all those most vulnerable and visionary. Make no mistake about it.  True climate justice is about system change – not only climate change, not a trademark branding mechanism and certainly not about protecting status quo.

I do not believe corporations have any right to be ‘sitting at the table’ as so many NGOs justify is necessary. If corporations truly want to become sustainable – great – let them advertise their efforts with their own marketing firms. They certainly do not need to NGOs to assist. They can manage on their own. In Copenhagen the corporate elites all sat at the table while civil society was locked outside.

In a blog, a writer wrote about Lumumba Di-Aping, Sudanese by birth and chief negotiator of the G77. The writer describes Lumumba addressing the citizens as follows: “He did not start his speech immediately. Instead he sat silently, tears rolling down his face. He put his head in his hands and said “We have been asked to sign a suicide pact.” The room was frozen into silence, shocked by the sight of a powerful negotiator, an African elder if you like, exhibiting such strong emotion. He apologised to the audience, but said that in his part of Sudan it was “better to stand and cry than to walk away.”

In the comments below someone responds:

If it takes the tears of an old man to sensitize the cold hearted then let the tears of the poor come down like acid rain on the heads of the rich and selfish.

So let’s take this wise advice. Let’s stand and cry – and then let’s walk away from he strawberry fields where nothing is real. Then let the tears of the poor fall like acid rain on the heads of the cold hearted who have sold their humanity. Then let’s dry off our tears and get to work. No more compromising. We have a planet to save.

for the earth,

cory morningstar

[1] See the full article ‘Behind the environmental lobby: it may seem stranger than fiction, but it’s a documentable fact: the eco-socialist movement is financed by the super-rich as part of a comprehensive agenda for global control’ here.