SLAPPed, Arrested, Deemed Eco-Terrorists: TransCanada Blockaders Persevere. TransCanada supervisors huddle with local off-duty police officers and the private security they hired during a blockade action on Monday, October 15, when more than 50 activists stormed the pipeline easement in an attempt to re-supply blockaders occupying a tree village in Winnsboro, Texas to halt construction on the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.
(Photo: Tar Sands Blockade / Flickr)Tar Sands Blockade activists maintain their vigil in the trees despite the best efforts of hired security and legal wrangling to dislodge them. Igniting a Revolution - Earth Liberation Front (part II) CNN EXCLUSIVE The Earth Liberation Front. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front - Documentary Trailer - POV 2011. Do We Need a Militant Movement to Save the Planet (and Ourselves)? August 5, 2011 | Like this article?
Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Environmental groups are trying to build a critical mass around issues like global warming to inspire public action and encourage legislators to get their heads out of the sand. The Sierra Club is working to block new coal burning power plants, a new coalition is organizing actions against a tar sands pipeline, and folks in West Virginia are sitting in trees in an attempt to halt destructive strip mining. A new book called Deep Green Resistance, by Aric McBay, Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen, says that we likely won't have enough people interested in saving the planet before we run out of time. They use words like "militant" and "resistance" a lot. And if you're firmly in the nonviolence-is-the-answer camp, don't get scared off (yet), because there is a ton of crucial information in this book.
And so how do we save the world (and along with it ourselves)?
As eco-terrorism wanes, governments still target activist groups seen as threat. Even as environmental and animal rights extremism in the United States is on the wane, officials at the federal, state and local level are continuing to target groups they have labeled a threat to national security, according to interviews with numerous activists, internal FBI documents and a survey of legislative initiatives across the country.
Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad (R) signed a law this month, backed by the farm lobby, that makes it a crime to pose as an employee or use other methods of misrepresentation to get access to operations in an attempt to expose animal cruelty. Utah passed a similar bill, nicknamed an “ag-gag” law, on Wednesday. Last month, Victor VanOrden, an activist in his mid-20s, received the maximum sentence of five years in prison under a separate Iowa law for attempting to free minks from one of the state’s fur farms.
At the same time, though, acts that might be defined as eco-terrorism are down. FBI officials say two factors contribute to the reduced threat. British Court Rules Direct Action OK Because Global Warming Risks So Bad. The Maidstone Crown Court heard testimony from NASA climate expert James Hansen, an Inuit leader from Greenland and the British Conservative Party's environment adviser.
The jury was told that the Kingsnorth Power Plant emits 20,000 tons of CO2 every day - the same amount as the 30 least polluting countries in the world combined - and that the British Government had advanced plans to build a new coal-fired power station next to the existing site on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent. The 'not guilty' verdict means the jury believed that shutting down the coal plant was justified in the context of the damage to property caused around the world by CO2 emissions from Kingsnorth. One of the Kingsnorth 6, Emily Hall, said after her acquittal: "This is a huge blow for [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown and his plans for new coal-fired power stations," said Emily Hall, one of the acquitted activists. "It wasn't only us in the dock, it was coal-fired power generation as well. " The Green Scare and What it Means For Activism.
In April 2012, activists in Italy entered a Green Hill dog breeding facility and removed 40 beagles from the premises, handing them over the fence to other activists, who took them away in waiting cars.
The beagles were bred to be sold to laboratories where they would be used for testing. These activists, and others, are a part of what has been termed the Green Scare, a phrase referring to the growing prominence of radical environmental activism. The Green Scare deems acts of radical environmentalism “eco-terrorism” and is a reflection of increased political and legal attention to these groups. Jeff Luers writes in A Brief Description of Environmental Activism about his perception that environmental activists are, “motivated (in part) by a sense of deep ecology.
Why Eco-Terrorism Is A Real, And Present, Danger to British Columbia... Derrick Jensen- Founder of the Deep Green Resistance movement… There’s been a lot of debate about eco-terrorism this past week.
It all came out of an RCMP report that was released on a freedom of information request. Greenpeace was mentioned in this report, and they fought back against it this week- albeit poorly.