Exxpose Exxon

As the world's largest private oil company, ExxonMobil has the power to direct the energy industry and policy makers toward a cleaner, more secure energy future. Instead, it is using its wealth and power to take America backwards.

ExxonSecrets.org has been tracking ExxonMobil's funding of front groups and junk science for close to a decade.

Find out what you can do to counter ExxonMobil's deliberate and deadly obfuscation to prolong their obscene profitmaking.

http://www.exxposeexxon.com/

When Words Fail

Climate change activists have chosen a magic number

by Bill McKibben
Published in the July/August 2008 issue of Orion magazine


I ALMOST NEVER write about writing—in my aesthetic, the writing should disappear, the thought linger. But the longer I’ve spent working on global warming—the greatest challenge humans have ever faced—the more I’ve come to see it as essentially a literary problem. A technological and scientific challenge, yes; an economic quandary, yes; a political dilemma, surely. But centrally? A crisis in metaphor, in analogy, in understanding. We haven’t come up with words big enough to communicate the magnitude of what we’re doing. How do you say: the world you know today, the world you were born into, the world that has remained essentially the same for all of human civilization, that has birthed every play and poem and novel and essay, every painting and photograph, every invention and economy, every spiritual system (and every turn of phrase) is about to be . . . something so different? Somehow “global warming” barely hints at it. The same goes for any of the other locutions, including “climate chaos.” And if we do come up with adequate words in one culture, they won’t necessarily translate into all the other languages whose speakers must collaborate to somehow solve this problem.

I’ve done my best, and probably better than some. My first book, The End of Nature, has been published in twenty-four languages, and the essential idea embodied in the title probably came through in most of them. It wasn’t enough, though, nor were any of the other such phrases (like “boiling point” or “climate chaos") that more skillful authors have used since. So in recent years I’ve found myself grasping, trying to strip the language down further, make it communicate more. This year I find myself playing with numbers.

When the Northwest Passage opened amid the great Arctic melt last summer, many scientists were stunned. James Hansen, our greatest climatologist, was already at work on a paper that would try, for the first time, to assign a real number to global warming, a target that the world could aim at. No more vague plans to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or keep it from doubling, or slow the rate of growth—he understood that there was already enough evidence from the planet’s feedback systems, and from the quickly accumulating data about the paleoclimate, to draw a bright line.

In a PowerPoint presentation he gave at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco last December, he named a number: 350 parts per million carbon dioxide. That, he said, was the absolute upper bound of anything like safety—above it and the planet would be unraveling. Is unraveling, because we’re already at 385 parts per million. And so it’s a daring number, a politically unwelcome one. It means, in shorthand, that this generation of people—politicians especially—can’t pass the problem down to their successors. We’re like patients who’ve been to the doctor and found out that our cholesterol is too high. We’re in the danger zone. Time to cut back now, and hope that we do it fast enough so we don’t have a stroke in the meantime. So that Greenland doesn’t melt in the meantime and raise the ocean twenty-five feet.

For me, the number was a revelation. With a few friends I’d been trying to figure out how to launch a global grassroots climate campaign—a follow-up to the successful Step It Up effort that organized fourteen hundred demonstrations across the U.S. one day last spring and put the demand for an 80 percent cut in America’s carbon emissions at the center of the political debate. We need to apply even more pressure, and to do it on a global scale—it is, after all, global warming. But my friends and I were having a terrible time seeing how to frame this next effort. For one thing, the 180 or so countries that will negotiate a new international treaty over the next eighteen months are pretty much beyond the reach of effective lobbying—we can maybe influence the upcoming American election, but the one in Kenya? In Guatemala? In China? And for another, everyone insists on speaking those different languages. A Babel, this world.

But a number works. And this is a good one. Arcane, yes—parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. But at least it means the same thing in every tongue, and it even bridges the gap between English and metric. And so we secured the all-important URL: 350.org. (Easier said than done.) And we settled on our mission: To tattoo that number into every human brain. To make every person on Planet Earth aware of it, in the same way that most of them know the length of a soccer field (even though they call it a football pitch or a voetbal gebied). If we are able to make that happen, then the negotiations now under way, and due to conclude in Copenhagen in December of 2009, will be pulled as if by a kind of rough and opaque magic toward that goal. It will become the definition of success or of failure. It will set the climate for talking about climate.

So the literary challenge—and the challenge for artists and musicians and everyone else—is how to take a mere number and invest it with meaning. How to make people understand that it means some kind of stability. Not immunity—we’re well past that juncture, and even Hansen says the number is at best the upper bound of safety, but still. Some kind of future. Some kind of hope. That it means kids able to eat enough food, that it means snowcaps on mountains, that it means coral reefs, that it means, you know, penguins. For now 350 is absolutely inert. It means nothing, comes with no associations. But our goal is to fill it up with overtones and shades and flavors. The weekend before we officially launched the campaign, for instance, 350 people on bicycles rode around the center of Salt Lake City. That earned a story in the paper and educated some people about carbon dioxide—but it also started to tint 350 with images of bicycles and the outdoors and good health and pleasure. We need 350 churches ringing their bells 350 times; we need 350 spray-painted across the face of shrinking glaciers (in organic paint!); we need a stack of 350 watermelons on opening day at your farmers’ market; we need songs and videos; we need temporary tattoos for foreheads. We may need 350 people lining up to get arrested in front of a coal train.

It makes sense that we need a number, not a word. All our words come from the old world. They descend from the time before. Their associations have congealed. But the need to communicate has never been greater. We need to draw a line in the sand. Say it out loud: 350. Do everything you can.

Restore Pesticide Reporting at National Agricultural Statistics Service

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on May 21st that it plans to cut its Pesticide Reporting at National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). The program tracked national pesticide use and proved critical for consumer groups, scientists, farmers and environmental groups to monitor pesticide trends and impacts.
NASS' elimination of the Agricultural Chemical Use Database will have a major impact on consumers' Right to Know about pesticide residues and food safety.
Pesticide Reporting has become particularly important in the last ten years since Genetically Engineered Crops have become widely used and pesticide use has actually increased!
Please contact USDA Secretary Ed Schafer and your Congressperson today!

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=24757

Take action on forced labour and exploitation of domestic workers in the Philippines

Domestic workers in the Philippines, the vast majority of whom are women and girls, are not given the same protections as other workers under labour laws and work in other people's homes hidden from public view. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, and many are the victims of forced labour. Many domestic workers migrate from rural areas to the cities and are vulnerable to trafficking, as well as to debt bondage.

The Domestic Workers Bill, known popularly as the Batas Kasambahay, was first filed in 1995 and affords key protections to all domestic workers. For several years, the passage of the Batas Kasambahay has been delayed by Presidential impeachment proceedings and various other postponements.

The enactment of the Batas Kasambahay would be a vital step forwards in ensuring that domestic workers in the Philippines are not subject to abuse, exploitation and forced labour. Anti-Slavery International urges the Philippines Government to prioritise this legislation and ensure that it passes without further delay.


http://www.antislavery.org/homepage/campaign/phillippines.htm

Why won't America join the movement to ban cluster munitions?

Over half the world's governments agreed last week to a ban on cluster munitions. But not the United States. Our government not only skipped the deliberations, but continues to defend its policy of keeping and using these deadly weapons.

Why won't America join the movement to ban cluster munitions? Our executive director Sarah Holewinski sat down with a premier expert to find out.Marc Garlasco is senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch and a board member of CIVIC. He was instrumental in getting the ban passed and was there at its signing.

Sarah: The US says it can't support the Convention on Cluster Munitions because its military then couldn't help countries devastated by tsunamis and earthquakes. Is this true?


Marc: This is circular reasoning at its best. First of all, what humanitarian operation uses cluster munitions? The real issue is US ships have cluster munitions on them, and the US was worried their allies who did sign the Convention could no longer work with it because of that. But this is a non-issue. No humanitarian or peacekeeping operation has ever been allowed because of weapons.

Take the landmine ban treaty, for example. The US didn't sign that and yet has worked together with allies like the UK (who did sign it) for years. What's more, this new Convention allows for those kinds of partnerships, whether cluster munitions are on ships or planes, so this is a non-issue.

Sarah: But the US says it needs cluster munitions to defend the country. Do we really need them?

Marc: We haven't used them since 2003, so let's just say they're obviously not indispensable when fighting a war. There are plenty of other weapons that can defend the country and not indiscriminately kill and maim civilians, who represent the vast majority of victims.

Sarah: The US says it won't "unilaterally get rid of" clusters.

Marc: The Cluster Munitions Conventions is nowhere near a unilateral effort. There are 111 countries who have agreed to destroy their stockpiles and not use these horrible weapons again, including key NATO allies like the UK, Germany, France, and Canada. If they can do it, so can the United States.

Sarah: So, as a nation, we're really behind the 8-ball here, aren't we?

Marc: Couldn't have said it better myself.
*********************************************
We need your help to limit one of the world's most indiscriminate and deadly weapons - cluster bombs.

US-made cluster bombs have been used in many of the world's deadliest conflicts, including Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia. Though intended for the battlefield, these weapons frequently contaminate areas where civilians live, causing death and injury to innocent men, women, and far too many children. Even when conflicts end, unexploded cluster "duds" are often left behind, posing a constant threat for years to come.

TAKE ACTION NOW! Use the form below to tell your Senators and Representatives to co-sponsor the Cluster Munitions Joint Resolution that presses the United States Government to sign on to the Cluster Munitions Convention.

Despite the seriousness of this problem, the United States did not participate in the Cluster Munitions Convention and refuses to sign the treaty. Several Senators including Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), and Rep. James P. McGovern (D-MA) have drafted a "joint resolution" which calls on the American government to sign the Convention and prioritize the safety of men, women and children in conflict zones. Never doubt, your letters make a big difference.

Read the full text of the Cluster Munitions Convenition.
Image courtesy of the BBC.

Here are the Congress members who've already agreed to co-sponsor this important action. They do not need letters because they're already on board!

Sen Sanders, Bernard [VT]
Sen Cardin, Benjamin [MD]
Sen Feingold, Russ [WI]
Sen Brown, Sherrod [OH]
Sen Durbin, Dick [IL]

http://action.civicworldwide.org/t/1538/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7109

Florida PIRG : Behind Closed Doors? Not This Time.

Check with your state PIRG for this action...Every six years Congress debates our transportation future behind closed doors. We can't let that happen this time.

Urge Congress to double the portion of federal transportation funding that goes to clean, efficient alternatives to driving.

http://www.floridapirg.org/action/transportation/petition?id4=ES

$544 Billion in Subsidies for Nuclear Industry

News Release

$544 Billion in Subsidies for Nuclear Industry

June 2, 2008

Institute for Public Accuracy

KARL GROSSMAN
Grossman just wrote the piece "Half-Trillion Dollars for Nukes!" which states: "With Wall Street unwilling to finance new nuclear plants, U.S. Senators Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and John Warner of Virginia have cooked up a scheme to provide $544 billion -- yes, with a 'b' -- in subsidies for new nuclear power plant development.

"Their move will be debated on the floor of the Senate Tuesday, June 3.

"A Lieberman aide describes the plan as 'the most historic incentive for nuclear in the history of the United States.'

"The Lieberman-Warner scheme is cloaked in a climate change bill -- the claim being that nuclear power plants don't emit greenhouse gases and thus don't contribute to global warming. However, the overall 'nuclear cycle' -- which includes mining, milling, fuel enrichment and fabrication, and reprocessing -- has significant greenhouse gas emissions that do contribute to global warming."

Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, author of several books on nuclear technology and host of the nationally syndicated TV program Enviro Close-Up.
More Information


For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=1725

Tell Exxon: Use your massive profits for cleaner energy!

Pressure is mounting on ExxonMobil as they approach their annual shareholders' meeting this Wednesday, May 28.

Facing growing concerns about the future of the company and Exxon's failure to address climate change, more and more shareholders believe that ExxonMobil is not using its massive profits ($40 billion in 2007) in a way that will best serve its consumers, investors and the environment.

We need everyone to tell Exxon that business as usual – creating climate emissions, destroying Canada's forests for tar sands, and hurting the world's poor – is not acceptable. Take action with us, if you haven't already:

http://www.coopamerica.org/takeaction/exxon/

Open Letter to Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and Yellowstone Superintendent Suzanne Lewis:

www.westyellowstonenews.com May 16, 2008


Open Letter to Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer and Yellowstone Superintendent Suzanne Lewis:

I have just seen the press release on your decision to haze bison near West Yellowstone into the Park. How absurd and despicable! Aside from the fact that green-up has barely begun inside the Park, not to mention that bison are now calving and hazing them creates additional unnecessary stress for them, your "little" operation conveniently ignores the conspicuous lack of cattle anywhere near Horse Butte and the Upper Madison.

You're not protecting cattle against brucellosis--a truly frivolous and dishonest assertion. You're merely torturing bison to please the obsolete and oligarchic livestock industry.

The livestock industry clearly owns your offices. Your actions willfully neglect the public trust--your duty to the citizens of Montana and the United States to conserve and protect bison against all enemies. The livestock industry is the enemy of bison, but you have thrown your support to the wrong side. It may be politick to do so, but it is neither courageous nor moral.

Once again, the State of Montana and Yellowstone National Park are demonstrating that the mentality and brutality of the police state drives the so-called Interagency Bison Management Plan. You may have the law--not to mention the big battalions--on your side, but you don't have history on your side. It is we, those of us who know the truth, who are writing the history. And history will not treat you two any better than it has treated Chivington and Custer.

Slaughter all the bison you want; how will history remember you? We all already know the answer.

Sincerely,

Robert Hoskins

Crowheart, Wyo.




http://westyellowstonenews.com/articles/2008/05/16/opinions/letter2.txt

Mass Atrocities Against Ethnic Minority Civilians - TAKE ACTION

US Campaign For Burma.org

Child Soldiers
Forced Labor
Sexual Violence
Health Crisis/Landmines
3200 Villages Destroyed

Eastern Burma is Asia's worst Internally Displaced People (IDP) crisis zone, with over half a million people on the run from the military dictatorship's vicious attacks and ethnic cleansing. Burma's ethnic nationality areas around the country are all subject to the military dictatorship's attacks and abuses.

The situation in Eastern Burma, however, is particularly dire: the armed conflict raging in Eastern Burma is the world's longest currently-running conflict. The military has destroyed over 3200 villages, and Eastern Burma is now the world's most heavily mined region. In 2006 alone, 82,000 people fled from or were forced from their homes to become IDPs in Eastern Burma, now living in camps guarded by ethnic resistance armies, barely surviving. These people have fled direct attacks aimed at ethnically cleansing resource-rich areas and consolidating the military dictatorship's control over the entire country. The military uses tactics such as rape, forced labor, abducting children to be soldiers, torture and executions to instill their reign of terror over eastern Burma.

The attacks on civilians in eastern Burma started for a number of different reasons. It is important to understand that the areas under attack by the ruling military junta have been controlled by ethnic groups in Burma for many years. The present military junta has never controlled these areas. The junta began carrying out a war in order to take over these areas from the ethnic minorities, which had their own government, security apparatus and commerce. The junta wants complete, totalitarian control of the entire region.

Watch the trailer to Witness‘ video “Shoot on Sight” to learn more.

http://uscampaignforburma.org/learn-about-burma/attacks-eastern-burma

Internal Displacement in Eastern Burma: 2007 Survey
- From Thailand Burma Border Consortium (www.tbbc.org) .

Campaign of Brutality
- From Free Burma Rangers (www.freeburmarangers.org). A report and analysis of Burma Army offensive Against the People of Northern Karen State, Eastern Burma, Feb 2006- Feb 2007. Free Burma Rangers is a good source for up to date information on the situation

Map of Displaced Villages 1996-2007
- From TBBC

Report on Satellite Imagery of the Conflict in Eastern Burma
- Produced by the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights project as part of
the Science and Human Rights Program (SHRP; http://shr.aaas.org) of the American Association or the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Tell TIAA-CREF to put genocide-free investing on the ballot

Investors Against Genocide

New campaign launched
to get TIAA-CREF
to put genocide-free investing
on the ballot
for its July 15, 2008
shareholders meeting.

https://www.investorsagainstgenocide.net/IAGSendAMessageTIAA-CREF.htm

How to support genocide-free investing at TIAA-CREF

Please join our shareholder campaign for TIAA-CREF to commit to genocide-free investing. Though TIAA-CREF is not one of the largest holders of problem companies, such as PetroChina, it should live up to its marketing credo of “financial services for the greater good."

You can play a key role whether or not you are a TIAA-CREF shareholder. You and your organization can help by sening messages to TIAA-CREF and by spreading the word about the campaign to get the genocide-free investing proposal on the ballot for the July 15, 2008, shareholders meeting.
Send a message to TIAA-CREF asking them to put the genocide-free investing shareholder proposal on the proxy ballot for voting at the July 15, 2008, shareholder meeting. Though it was submitted five months in advance, TIAA-CREF is pushing the proposal to July 2009! Your voice as a customer, along with many thousands of others, is especially important!
Submit a shareholder proposal to a TIAA-CREF fund. We've made it easy to play a part. See below.
Tell your friends and forward them this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Tell TIAA-CREF You Do Not Want Your Retirement Money to Support Genocide
Forward this email text to your friends and ask them to support the effort to get our proposal on the upcoming ballot and to make TIAA-CREF genocide free.
Write a letter to the editor of your local paper. Click here for a sample.
Most local weekly newspapers (not the large metropolitan dailies) will publish all letters to the editor received from town residents. You can easily find the email address by searching for your paper on the Internet. You will most likely find instructions on submitting a letter to the editor in the "Opinion" section. To make it easy, we’ve drafted a sample letter that you can cut and paste into an email and send to your hometown paper.
Raise awareness at your workplace, especially if your employer offers TIAA-CREF funds in its retirement plans. Get your company and co-workers involved.
Make a donation. We are a volunteer-based organization so 100% of your contribution will go directly to shareholder outreach.
Publicize the campaign to your group's members via email to your list, website, internal magazines and bulletins.
Provide a statement of support from your group.
Use the campaign materials that we've provided.
Contact us with your ideas and interest in working together on this campaign. Thanks for your help!
Learn more about genocide-free investing and our strategy and plans for shareholder proposals.

Oppose a Sweeping New Federal DNA Database! Say NO to the DNA Fingerprint Act!

Oppose a Sweeping New Federal DNA Database! Say NO to the DNA Fingerprint Act!
Synopsis
Go here to tell the government we don't want them to have the power to collect our DNA: http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail&o=0900006480511b01

Description
At the end of 2005, a little-noticed provision was slipped into the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization bill that provided the federal government with the power to collect and permanently retain DNA samples from anyone arrested for any crime whether or not they are convicted, any non-U.S. citizen detained or stopped by federal authorities for any reason, and everyone in federal prison. Now the government is trying to put the DNA Fingerprint Act into practice.

This is a dangerous invasion of privacy. DNA is not a fingerprint – it contains vast amounts of sensitive medical information about us.

Congress held no hearings on this dangerous legislation, even though it:

threatens the privacy of millions of Americans;
has a disproportionate affect on people of color;
potentially clogs our criminal justice system with information about law-abiding people (which could hinder criminal investigations); and
turns the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” on its head.
Implementation of this law means that more than one million innocent people will have their DNA forcibly collected, analyzed and retained in a government database each year. Federal agencies would be required to take DNA samples from:


Individuals arrested for the most minor of crimes, such as peaceful protestors who are demonstrating on federal property.
Countless numbers of visitors from other countries who are pulled aside in airports by the Transportation Security Administration.
Lawful immigrants seeking admission to this country, whether at the land border or in passport control at the airport.
Further, implementation of this law will have a dramatic impact on communities of color and further the assault on the rights of immigrants. Currently only a limited number of crimes trigger inclusion in the federal DNA database. By including the DNA profiles of everyone held in federal prisons, where people of color are held in alarming disproportion, this law aggravates the racial inequities of the federal criminal justice system. Collection of DNA from all immigration detainees will further slant the database toward a more disproportionate inclusion of Latinos.

This is a potentially critical problem if the federal government were to permit what they call “familial searches,” already permitted in many states and in the UK, where law-enforcement use DNA profiles to search for genetic similarities. This effectively increases the reach of the database to include the relatives of everyone whose profile is already there, creating an even greater racial imbalance in the system. The number of people affected by the program would mushroom exponentially.

Center for Constitutional Rights http://ccrjustice.org/search/node/dna+fingerprint+database

Whaling Scandal -- Take Action

Go here to take action:

http://usactions.greenpeace.org/action/start/192/?session_action=reset&action=start&usa_source_template=gpusa

We've said for a long time that Japan's so-called research program is actually commercial whaling in a flimsy disguise. But today, we have the evidence in our hands.

After a four-month long undercover investigation, Greenpeace exposed evidence of widespread embezzlement of whale meat occurring right under the noses of the public officials who run the whaling program.

The best cuts of whale meat, used to make whale bacon, are smuggled into crew cabins, preserved in salt, and then shipped home in boxes marked "cardboard" or "salted stuff" to be sold on the black market. Greenpeace intercepted one such box -- worth up to $3,000.

Greenpeace has evidence that more than a ton of whale meat was snuck from the whaling ship this year alone. One of our sources claims to have heard a crew member boast of building a house on the proceeds from his illegal take.

And, after all of this, we're still supposed to believe that the hunt is all in the name of scientific research to help the whales? Come on! Nobody is buying that line anymore.

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Now is the time to rock the boat in Japan. The whaling program has been an embarrassment to Japan's Foreign Affairs department all year. Your letters helped cancel the humpback hunt - and now in the spotlight of this scandal, it's time to cancel the rest.

Take action and send a message to the Prime Minister asking him to end whaling for good! We need your help to put an end to "research" whaling once and for all.