Sky Protectors’ Win against California’s Carbon Colonialism

Sky Protectors, No Carbon Offsets, False Solutions, Climate ChangeIndigenous Environmental Network’s International Sky Protectors Delegation and a broad coalition of local California tribal members, environmental justice groups, fence line communities, people of color, academics and NGOs celebrated a significant win Friday, November 16th against California’s cap and trade carbon market program.

In a marathon hearing of the California Air Resources Board, Sky Protectors’ eloquent testimonies played a significant role towards blocking the vote on the so-called Tropical Forest Standard (TFS) until April 2019. Blocking the adoption of the Tropical Forest Standard, temporarily protects world’s tropical forests and their guardians from a false solution to climate change called forest carbon offsets. The Sky Protectors also temporarily stalled momentum for the airlines industry, the United Nations and carbon markets all over the world to use such forest offsets, which often are generated by evicting Indigenous Peoples and local communities from their land and territories. Click here to read more.

Indigenous leaders from Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, and Nigeria REJECT tropical forest offsets. Friday, Nov. 16th, the California Air Resources Board

Sky Protector – Briefing Paper 6

BIG OIL’S CARBON TAX FRAUD and U.S. CARBON PRICING

INCREASE FRACKING and GLOBAL WARMING
This is not a joke. This is a real U.S. government CARBON TAX CREDIT form.

Click HERE to Download / Print

Sky Protector – Briefing Paper 9

WARNING FOR TRIBES!

CARBON OFFSETS THREATEN INDIGENOUS SOVEREIGNTY: justice, economy, environment, culture, rights and future FOR 100 YEARS – Carbon Forest Offsets sound like easy money…

Click here to Download / Print

OPEN LETTER FROM THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE WORLD

LETTER FROM THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE WORLD TO THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA AND THE GOVERNOR’S CLIMATE AND FORESTS TASK FORCE
September 10, 2018
Ramaytush and Greater Ohlone Territory (San Francisco, CA)

Original peoples and Indigenous nations of the world gathered on the Ramaytush and the greater Ohlone territory in California supported by ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (1989) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) to protest the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) hosted by Governor Jerry Brown and the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF). The GCAS and GCF must not place a market value on the carbon sequestration capacity of our forests in the Global South and North.

You cannot commodify the Sacred — we reject these market based climate change solutions and projects such as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program (REDD+), because they are false solutions that further destroy our rights, our ability to live in our forests, and our sovereignty and self-determination. False solutions to climate change and climate disruption destroy both our material and spiritual relationship to the Earth. The GCF does not represent us and has no authority over our peoples and territories.

There is an intrinsic interrelationship between our forests and our peoples of the North and the South. All of Creation is alive and interrelated. The air we breathe has life and gives life to all and cannot be bought, sold or traded. As our Sarayaku brothers and sisters say, KAWSAK SACHA, the forest is alive. The spirits of our ancestors live in these living forests, the tundra, the plains, the deserts, the mountains, and the oceans. We are all children of the same mother, Mother Earth. Our relationship with our forests requires us to abide by the original instructions of Mother Earth.

With Global Climate Action Summit, Paris Comes to San Francisco

Photo by Emily Jovais: Miya Yoshitani of APEN speaks at a press conference for the Sept. 8 climate march.

When President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, California Governor Jerry Brown announced that he would host his own “Global Climate Action Summit.” So on Sept. 12-14, hundreds of business and government leaders from around the world, along with experts, nonprofits, and national officials, will convene in San Francisco. Their purpose is to discuss ways of stepping up their efforts to meet the goal of the Paris agreement — keeping global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

In conjunction with Brown’s summit, thousands of activists will hold their own events, kicking off with a massive march on Sept. 8 and including three conferences, several protests (some including civil disobedience), a film festival, and programs to showcase the voices of the “frontline communities” most impacted by the fossil fuel industry.

Look beyond tech in the lead up to SF climate summit

Community organizations like PODER, which serves the Mission district pictured here, should be part of the conversation around climate change too. (Jessica Christian/S.F. Examiner)

When the world streams into California for Jerry Brown’s climate summit in September, they’ll focus on the things that the state considers it has done right: the electric cars, the massive solar installations in the desert, the big shiny batteries that hold some of the keys to the planet’s energy future.

But there’s another story to be told about California, a reminder that the world is always a more complicated place once you look behind the p.r. photos. Reporters and environmentalists should plan on coming out a few days before the September 12 summit; if they do they’ll have a better understanding of the real challenges and opportunities.

September 8, for instance, will feature a massive march in San Francisco, part of a worldwide Rise for Climate action protest. It won’t be a celebration—it will be a demand for faster and fairer action, action that reaches every kind of person.

Brown Can’t Be a Climate Leader While Discounting the Poor and Communities of Color

Climate change poses a serious threat to humanity’s survival and all living creatures that we share the planet with. While it may be that California achieved its self-imposed greenhouse gas emission goals ahead of 2020, this does not signify that we are on track to impeding climate change or the unrelenting impact it has on our communities.