Eco-activism

12 May, 2022

News and commentary from the front

I am certainly not the only person who thinks that our environment and habitat is the most important thing. The quality of our land, air and water directly correlate to the possibility of Life continuing on the planet. And I am sure I am one of many common many people who do not feel that money is an adequate exception to this rule. Or to say it bluntly, I don’t give a damn about your profits. I just want my world back.

Environmental activists are being killed in Honduras over their opposition to mining Two men shot Arnold Joaquín Morazán Erazo to death in his home in Tocoa, Honduras, one night in October 2020. Morazán was an environmental activist and one of 32 people criminalized by the Honduran government for defending the Guapinol River against the environmental impacts of a new iron oxide mine in the Carlos Escaleras National Park. So far, at least eight people who have opposed the mine have been killed, putting its owner, Inversiones Los Pinares, at the centre of a deadly environmental conflict in the mineral-rich Bajo Aguán region. Local communities are concerned about the mine’s potential ecological damage. In their attempts to defend their territories, local leaders have been surveilled, threatened, injured and imprisoned, and some, like Morazán, have been killed.

In Honduras, they are simply killing the protesters. In the article, they call the process criminalization. They simply make rules for bidding people to protest against an iron mining production that will destroy a waterway. And in addition to whatever police brutalities they have to suffer, 10 people have simply been shot to death in the night in their homes.

If we ask what these people want, and I’m talking about both sides and I’m talking about simple motivation, the answers are pretty clear. The mining people want money and the protesters want clean air, land and water. And apparently there is an argument about this where there shouldn’t be. And also equally as opposite, there is a real criminal involved here and that is the economic system that allows this to happen.

AGL takes Greenpeace to court over use of its logo in ‘biggest climate polluter’ campaign Energy giant AGL has launched legal action against Greenpeace Australia Pacific over a campaign that targets the company as Australia’s biggest corporate greenhouse gas emitter. It comes after the environment group launched a report and campaign with posters and online advertising that feature AGL’s logo and phrases such as “generating pollution for generations” and “Still Australia’s biggest climate polluter”. AGL has commenced legal proceedings in the federal court and is seeking to have its logos removed from the campaign, alleging copyright infringement. Read more…

This second story is a bit less violent but no less important. It has to do with the Australian energy giant AGL taking GreenPeace to court to stifle a particular brand of protest that seems to target them specifically.

I think probably the main thing about bringing the activist to court is that it’s a monumental waste of time for them. It’s a waste of time and resources. By simply bringing up these really brainless arguments in court, a monumental amount of money needs to be paid into a legal system that will just drag its heels. This court appearance and all subsequent appeals by both sides will cost millions of dollars and years. And during that time, shell will remain in business. And truthfully, they had to pay their lawyers anyway.

Once again, we are completely missing the point. If it’s dollars versus environment, perhaps we just need a public vote. And really, if the internet works, why not just make it a simple question for every human being on the planet. Do we vote for money or do we vote for our environment.

My guess is that it will be a very unfortunate 50/50 much like the previous American election because there are too many people dissuaded by too much propaganda information given to them by the corporations to keep them from straying away from their stranglehold on the marketplace.

But someone has to take over the job of genuine oversight in favor of our environment. Because even if you are a money grubber, there will be nothing to spend your money on when the whole place collapses. And if you are thinking of making money on the collapse, please kill yourself today.

This story is very similar to the previous one in that it is about legal arguments and lawsuits preventing protesters from causing problems. This story however is Shell oil against a group that calls themselves Extinction Rebellion.

You can find the Google search for the group here and this is the blurb given to them by Wikipedia:

Extinction Rebellion is a global environmental movement with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse.
Wikipedia

It’s difficult for a lot of very comfortable people to understand what motivates people to form their own army. At the moment that I’m riding this I’m sitting in the middle of a public square in Pinsk Belarus and enjoying the first warm sunny day of the year. It’s a holiday today and I’m sitting next to a cafe watching people drink coffee and tea and past the afternoon and quiet conversation. And tomorrow everyone just simply goes back to work.

We’ve never really been in lockdown here. Nobody has ever asked anyone here to stop or you can pay attention to the coronavirus. There are people who have been wearing masks but there have also been people who have just simply ignored it all.

I wonder what it would mean to these people that there are armies being formed to fight for the health and survival of our planet. I wonder how this news would affect these casual people enjoying time off from there jobs. Just happy to be out in the sunshine.

And there’s also politics. And perhaps a surge in the popularity for the green party means something. This particular website is not directly attached to the green party of any country but perhaps indirectly connected to every Green party in every country.

But the truth is, if the courts are slow, electoral politics are slower. And if we’re talking about blocks of movement of four or five years waiting for results from promises and empty conversation, you get a compromise that means nothing will be done. And this would only be if our political system was trustworthy. If we count the amount of corruption that we absolutely know about and then add a reasonable 50 to 90% on top of that as to what is probable, waiting for politics to solve our problems is a complete waste of time.

In my point of view, there is only one solution. It has to do with raising the level of public consciousness or perhaps it has to do with simply passing extremely severe laws and backing them up. We simply have to stop. Every single one of us has to stop. We simply cannot be a world of 9 billion consumers depending on fossil fuels to transport our goods and ourselves unnecessarily from place to place. And this means a complete reconstruction of the economic system and a demand for people to respect their local economies. There is nowhere else to go except simply to stop relying on corporations and fossil fuels to be the bedrock of an unsustainable society.