Green Options

In the UK, journalist and television presenter Jeremy Clarkson found his own bit of global warming, on his doorstep! Seven members of group Climate Rush visited his home and left steaming piles of horse manure on his drive, along with a message reading ‘This is what you’re landing us in’.

‘No single project or human activity has caused depletion of the salmon runs or the near-extinction of the … orca, or the general degradation of the marine environment of Puget Sound. Yet every project has the potential to incrementally increase the burden upon the species and the Sound.’

Trouble in various kinds of paradise is the theme of this week’s environmental protest round up. Often, this kind of protest seems to happen in areas where low rates of employment and lack of other natural resources means that local residents are ‘forced’ to accept environmental projects that might be unacceptable in richer regions. But this week there is evidence that even Edens have their devils.

This week’s environmental protests are all focused around a key theme that leads to public protest: political failure. Discover the deeply rooted political antipathy that’s putting the ocean at risk, the place whree local people want to preserve an ancient resource against potential, rather than actual, harm while political powers want jobs and income for the immediate future and what happens when competing interests can’t solve their problems in discussion.

What makes a protest worthwhile? Does it have to change policy, or achieve the reversal of a specific decision? Recent protests in the environmental arena seem to have educative as well as practical purposes.

Environmental protest takes many forms and is as often defined by local culture as by the nature of the problem. This week’s round-up looks at how three different locations have been involved in very different forms of protest.

In a double first for the FBI, a domestic terrorist has been included on the international most-wanted list, and he’s an environmental activist too.

One of the biggest stories in the UK at present is the relationship between democracy and the police – or as it has been expressed several times by Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission - the police needed to remember that they were “servants, not masters” of the public.

Environmental protest is as large a part of the debate on the environment as is environmental legislation – in media terms it’s probably a bigger part than environmental data, which is often complex and unwieldy to transmit to a sound-bite audience …

Back on August 2, 2007, I did a podcast featuring three women — two Chileans and a Canadian — who had run afoul of the law in their respective countries. The Canadian is Betty Krawczyk, and I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing her by phone from her prison cell.

She’s intelligent, charming, and an outspoken proponent for environmental and civil rights issues. Our interview touches on Betty’s evaluation of the Canadian

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