1. Sierra Club
In its early days, The Sierra Club, founded in 1892 by conservationist, naturalist and explorer John Muir, was mostly made up of scientists interested in exploring the Sierra mountains. For years, the organization promoted the appreciation and stewardship of the outdoors but steered clear of civil disobedience. A change came last year when, in the face of increasingly dire warnings from climate scientists, the group’s executive director, Michael Brune, and then-president, Allison Chin, were arrested — with about 50 others, including McKibben — outside the White House protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.
This particular project — the Keystone XL pipeline
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2. Greenpeace
Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace International, talks with Bill in September about 30 Greenpeace activists detained in Russia.
Founded in 1971, Greenpeace’s initial advocacy work focused on its opposition to nuclear testing. In 1985, the French Secret Service famously bombed a Greenpeace ship moored in Auckland, New Zealand, on its way to protest French nuclear testing in Moruroa Atoll. Since then, the organization’s priority has shifted from nuclear proliferation to confronting climate change. But their strategy of direct action with an international focus has essentially remained the same.
In September of last year, 30 people who were aboard the Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise drew international attention when they were detained by authorities after a demonstration at a Russian drilling rig in the Arctic. The activists sought to highlight the exploitation of the fragile Arctic environment for fossil fuel extraction. Some of the activists were at first charged with piracy, though the Russian government later reduced the charges to “hooliganism” and released all involved, then dropped the charges entirely ahead of the Sochi Olympics. Two years earlier, two activists — including Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo — boarded a drilling rig off the coast of Greenland and were blasted for hours by fire hoses as the crew attempted to repel them, pushing them into the choppy sea.
3. dle No More
Idle No More, a group of mostly Canadian Native North Americans, sprang into existence in October 2012, when Canada’s conservative prime minister Stephen Harper pushed a law, known as C-45, through parliament that rolled back both environmental protections and indigenous peoples’ sovereignty in order to make the country’s tar sands, and the crude oil that could be extracted from them, more easily exploitable. Resource extraction projects, like the tar sands, often hurt North America’s indigenous populations disproportionately.
In protest of C-45, the group organized rallies in major cities across Canada. A leader of Idle No More, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence, started what would become a six-week-long hunger strike and groups of protesters blockaded rail lines and highways.
Last year, McKibben wrote about the group in the Huffington Post, “I sense that [Idle No More] is every bit as important as the Occupy movement that transfixed the world a year ago; it feels like it wells up from the same kind of long-postponed and deeply-felt passion that powered the Arab spring. And I know firsthand that many of its organizers are among the most committed and skilled activists I’ve ever come across. In fact, if Occupy’s weakness was that it lacked roots (it had to take over public places, after all, which proved hard to hold on to), this new movement’s great strength is that its roots go back farther than history.”
Explanation:
4. Union of Concerned Scientists
The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded during the height of the Vietnam war during a teach-in at MIT to protest the US government’s militarization of science. Initially, the group was concerned with nuclear proliferation and energy issues, but over time has shifted its focus to sustainability. Today, the majority of the UCS’s areas of advocacy focus on climate change.
The group is responsible for groundbreaking research on sustainability standards for vehicles and the disastrous affects of climate change. “Traditionally there have been two types of science: basic and applied. UCS has added a third category to the canon: engaged science,” the group’s website says. “Since its beginning, UCS has followed the example set by scientists: We share information, seek the truth, and let our findings guide our conclusions.”
Along with other groups such as the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, the Union of Concerned Scientists has been integral in refuting those who claim climate change is a hoax. The UCS also produces reports on how the fossil fuel industry and other private interests profit from inaction on climate change.
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