Climate Action, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice (CASEJ)

This is the Climate Action, Sustainability, and Environmental Justic'e (CASEJ)' Working Group wiki page.

Recently passed ["Call to Action"] about egregious corporate assault on the environment.

This group is UNDERSTAFFED. If you have some volunteer coordinating bandwidth and want to help coordinate meetings/events, please contact: volunteer@occupyboston.org

Contact e-mail: occupyboston.climate.action@gmail.com

Mailing List: <a href="https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/climate-action">Click here for the signup page for our mailing list</a>

Discussion Board: http://casej.boardhost.com

Meetings: Our next meeting will be Wednesday, March 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Democracy Center (45 Mt. Auburn St in Cambridge on the edge of Harvard Square).

For an overview of our history and activities and our connections to the broader fight against the tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline, see this article from the Boston Occupier:http://bostonoccupier.com/2012/02/13/calling-foul-on-fossil-fuels

Draft Mission Statement

The Occupy Boston Climate Action, Sustainability and Environmental Justice (CASEJ) Working Group seeks to provide a space where members of the Occupy/99% Movement and their allies can come together to help create a more just and sustainable world, locally and globally. We will accomplish this goal by:

• Educating ourselves and our communities about climate change and the environmental issues and solutions before us;
• Building Alliances within and beyond the Occupy/99% Movement, without regard for ideology or tactical preferences, to increase our collective power; and
• Taking Direct Action to confront the social, economic and political forces causing environmental injustice and highlight a new paradigm for life on earth, both human and non-human.

Proposals

On February 4, 2012, members of CASEJ brought the following proposal to the Occupy Boston General Assembly, which was passed by consensus.  See also http://www.occupyboston.org/2012/02/06/occupy-boston-supports-fossil-fuel-nuclear-subsidies.

The below proposal reached agreement at OB General Assembly, on February 4, 2012.

Fossil fuel and nuclear corporations are some of the wealthiest interests on the planet – yet they still suck up billions of dollars in government subsidies. They buy off elected officials and corrupt our political process while sticking us – the 99% – with the bill for the health, ecological and climate destruction they cause. Their coal, oil, gas and nukes fuel our unjust economic systems, imperil our planetary future and prevent us from shifting to a clean energy economy of, by and for the people.

Occupy Boston therefore calls for:

• An end to all government subsidies to fossil fuel and nuclear energy interests;
• An end to corporate influence, including energy industry influence, on politics;
• Immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to below the safe atmospheric threshold of 350 parts per million CO2e; starting with the rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline;
• A just transition for workers currently employed in fossil fuel and nuclear energy sectors to sustainable employment.

We pledge to make personal and group choices that support these aims.

Meeting Minutes

<a _fcknotitle="true" href="CASEJ Minutes - Dec. 19, 2011">CASEJ Minutes - Dec. 19, 2011</a> blank right now, please click and add!

Resources

This section is suggested as a place to put links to other groups we might be interested in collaborating with, learning from, etc., as well as links to articles of interest.

The Case for Carbon Fee and Dividend provides an overview of the economic rationale for why we need to put a tax on the carbon in fossil fuels in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. It presents a specific policy proposal called Carbon Fee and Dividend which would achieve gradually increasing costs for fossil fuels while shielding low income households from rising energy costs. It explains how implementation of this policy would stimulate economic growth to help undo the effects of the Great Recession.

CCL Boston Resource Library provides a collection of useful links to articles that help explain different dimensions of the problem of climate change focused primarily on economic and policy issues rather than the science.

www.grist.org is a website that provides environmental and sustainability news and policy analysis.