NEWSFORESTS

For the last month, All Against the Haul has been running a campaign on Change.org to help them in their fight against Exxon's "megaloads" project. Read below for their reaction to the recent Exxon spill in Montana, and how their petition has gained momentum.

Nearly 6,000 people have signed the Change.org national petition and 2,000 people have signed All Against the Haul's long-running campaign.

MISSOULA, MT— As cleanup workers struggle to recover and clean ExxonMobil’s 42,000 gallon Yellowstone River slick, the oil company’s controversial bid to create a permanent industrial corridor through Montana and Idaho’s Highway 12 is drawing new fire from concerned citizens around the country joining local residents in their fight.

Highway 12 is one of only 120 National Scenic Byways, a windy mountain two-lane road passing through national forests and along Lewis and Clark’s historic route. Exxon is pressing forward with its “megaloads” program — a succession of hundreds of larger-than-life (three-story high, 200-foot long) trucks that carry refining equipment to Alberta that would help to increase America’s consumption of oil from Canada’s dirty tar sands fields. 

(Seeing is believing - click here for a video on Exxon's proposal, and here for pictures of what similar trucks look like).

Did you know that 13,000 petition signatures, when printed, equal 260 feet of paper -- almost the same height of a mature old-growth redwood tree?

That was the symbolism unveiled on the steps of the California Capitol in Sacramento last Wednesday, as ralliers decried the state transit agency's plans to widen Highway 101 and destroy ancient redwoods in Richardson Grove State Park.

The rally went off without a hitch. According to Aliana Lee Knapp-Prasek, a Redway, CA resident who launched the Change.org action, two busloads of people met up and marched to Caltrans, some wearing bright orange vests and hardhats with "Eco Trans" spelled out on the back. There were banners, posters, puppets, animal costumes, drums and flutes. They converged on the building, chanting, and unrolled the petition in front of the building. (See a short write-up in The Sacramento Bee). A lead organizer of the Save Richardson Grove Coalition then met with aides in the Governor's office and delivered thousands of petition signatures and post cards asking that state officials prioritize timeless trees over a dubious highway widening.

The last year has been mostly hardship for Russia's Khimki Forest defenders—replete with beatings, bloody noses, bulldozers and bullying foreign corporations. Change.org members are well aware of their plight, with more than 23,000 of you supporting their campaign to end the construction corporation Vinci's involvement in the forest's destruction.

In a country where protest is too frequently repressed, the last four days have been a big party— a time for peace and celebration in Khimki Forest for 2,000 anti-corruption supporters who have come to show their voice. The Washington Post called it Russia's "Woodstock" moment.

Now, the celebration is over. And the beat goes on.

Renee Hodges is a guest author on Change.org writing about why she created a petition to stop a mountaintop removal mine near her home in Fayette County, West Virginia. Please read her post and then sign her petition, here. This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post.

This Friday at 10:30 a.m. a meeting of the Fayette County Commission in West Virginia is scheduled in the Commission Chambers at the Fayette County Courthouse. At this meeting people who are concerned about the several new mining permits, proposed by Frasure Creek Mining LLC, will have an hour to voice their concerns and opinions regarding the proposed mountaintop removal (MTR) site.

There are a total of nine permits so far, three active and six proposed. If Frasure Creek Mining LLC is permitted to move forward, that would mean a total of over 3,000 acres of mountaintop removal. They have already received permits for over 1,600 acres and yes, there are houses and communities in this area.

Ethel Jennings Newton invented Girl Scout cookies in 1934. She was a tall and elegant woman who believed her highest calling was to make the world a better place. She was also my grandmother.

Knowing my grandmother, whom we called "Angel," I can say this: Today, Ethel Jennings Newton would be ashamed of the destruction her inventiveness is causing in the lives of those powerless to stop it.

She would oppose the use of palm oil in Girl Scout cookies—a degradation of the product, by the way, as they originally called for butter—because the cultivation and export of palm oil is destroying rainforests in Southeast Asia and the lives of girls in those countries. She would abhor the fact that girls “overseas,” as she would have put it, are made to suffer in poverty to benefit their American counterparts.

Certainly, she would stand with Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen, two dedicated young girls from Michigan who are asking the Girl Scouts to rid Thin Mints, Trefoils and other beloved cookies of this harmful ingredient.

I have signed onto their campaign with the Rainforest Action Network on Change.org, and so have 60,000 others. I wish my grandmother were here to join me in demanding that Girl Scouts CEO Kathy Cloninger to do better than inexplicably claim her organization—one that promotes girls' empowerment—is itself powerless to better this situation.

Ethel Jennings Newton was never powerless. She grew up poor and proud on the prairie in the Midwest, and attended the University of Chicago on scholarship at the beginning of the 20th century, when few women were accepted into higher education. Interested in expanding knowledge of the world, she pioneered a new method for teaching social studies. At the same time, knowing the privations of poverty, she was drawn to volunteer at Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago as a social worker before such an occupation existed.

I recently interviewed Zack Porter of All Against the Haul (AATH), a group of Montana organizers fighting against Big Oil’s “megaloads.” Porter and his colleagues are as talented and committed as they come, but alone, they stand no chance of defeating the world’s second largest corporation.

And that’s perfectly alright – because they’re not alone. AATH is just one of what Porter calls “an incredible assortment of groups, not just across this region but across the country” that have banded together to defeat ExxonMobil. This coalition includes National Forest supervisors, prominent Indian tribes, local authors and politicians, national environmental groups, and more - and they are winning.

The megaloads in question are 200 enormous trucks that haul foreign-made refining equipment through the northwest to the Alberta Tar Sands, one of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel operations. When I say enormous, I mean three-stories tall, 200-feet long, and 650,000 pounds each. These megaloads are turning the Idaho and Montana portions of Highway 12 – a mountainous National Scenic Byway – into a permanent industrial corridor, cutting both National Forest trees and local electricity as they move. And all in the name of Exxon profits, global climate change, and Korean jobs.

“We are winning this campaign.”

These were not the words I was expecting to hear when I sat down with Zack Porter, campaign coordinator for All Against the Haul (AATH), at the Power Shift climate conference in Washington, DC last month. Porter and his team of Montana organizers are going to toe-toe with the second largest corporation in the world: Exxon Mobil. Their battle isn’t just David and Goliath; it’s David’s little brother and the guy who beat Goliath at his last wrestling match.

But Porter’s right – AATH and their allies across the northwest are winning this campaign.

At issue are Big Oil’s “megaloads” – over 200 trucks, three-stories high and 650,000 pounds each, transporting Korean-made oil equipment through rural communities and pristine National Forests to the Alberta Tar Sands. The megaloads have been on the road for less than three months but are wreaking havoc everywhere they go – cutting power to local towns, blocking traffic for hours at a time, putting the area’s rivers at risk (including the famous river that runs through it), and forcing forest supervisors to cut back trees on scenic byways.

Even as record flooding threatens much of the South, Cambridge and nearby Belmont in Massachusetts have chosen to build an apartment complex on what is now a wetland. Another name for the area is the Alewife Reservation, home to a silver maple forest that would serve as a natural buffer to rains that could threaten the entire Boston area. If the trees go, the water has no place else to flow but into the very developments positioned as 'affordable housing.' That's how the development slipped past the environmental safeguards, by being zoned for the have-nots.

To preserve it for everyone, Belmont and the city of Boston are hoping to buy the land back from the developer, O'Neill Property Group; but its value has skyrocketed since it was sold over ten years ago. It's a tangled problem, really. The property is valuable to O'Neill only if it is razed, and only to the people struggling to save the forest if it remains intact. Essentially O'Neill Property Group can hold the property hostage for as much as it likes, unless the city retracts the building permit to save the forest and brings in assessors to apraise the land and buy it back again.

This is exactly what this petition by the Friends of Alewife Reservation is attempting. Please sign it to keep an urban water safeguard, and all that flies, crawls, or swims in it, from disappearing beneath a tide of irresponsible development.

The Cerrado, a rare and beautiful ecosystem in Brazil, isn't a place that many people have heard about, despite the fact that it contains approximately 5 percent of life on Earth. That may be why its rapid destruction is falling under the radar.

Largely due to the growth of commercial agriculture (and, in particular, soy.. or 'soya' if you're in the UK), the Cerrado is disappearing faster than the Brazilian Amazon. Soy products from soy grown in this region are consumed by people and livestock around the world.

Think you're not contributing because you don't eat tofu? Well, 80% of soy crop is fed to livestock, and to chickens especially.

A representative of WWF UK filled me recently on the organization's efforts to save the Cerrado, and I learned that there is a lot that can be done to protect this ecosystem. You also can learn more about the Cerrado in the beautiful and interesting hand shadow film below or on WWF.

What can you do about all of this?

A federal regulation that will shape the future of the U.S. National Forest system, which includes 155 national forests spread over 193-million acres of across the country, will close for public comment this Friday, May 16th. Without major revisions to the draft of the rule, some environmental groups such as Earthjustice say that the regulations will leave our forests in peril.

This is not just an issue for your typical treehugger. National forest lands are the single largest source of drinking water in the nation, providing fresh water to about 124 million people. In addition, millions of people visit national forests every year to enjoy hunting, fishing, camping, hiking and wildlife watching. More than 5,000 species of fish and wildlife also happen to make the national forest system their homes.