Iran is not the only place where government agencies are trying to (marginally) disrupt people advocating for change.

Today, the West Virginia State Police picked up four Climate Ground Zero activists at home in Rock Creek on some old charges from October.  Back during a peaceful march organized by seniors against mountaintop removal led by 81 year old Roland Micklem, two young activists –Gabe Schwartzman, 19, and David German, 18– were arrested for unfurling a banner on top of Walker CAT’s headquarters.  The charges are related to that banner drop.  Last month, the state police arrested Micklem over the same incident.

As a result of the Oct. banner hang, Walker CAT president Steve Walker equated the anti-MTR activists holding a banner on his propert with terrorist suicide bombers, that’s right, suicide bombers.  Beyond the insult to real victims of actual suicide bombers, Walker’s comment had only the intention of creating more tension in a West Virginia already marred by violence and intimidation.

Next month, Climate Ground Zero will have a three week winter action camp which will prepare 30-50 anti-MTR for actions in the Coal River Valley to carry out civil disobedience actions.

Could these arrests be a pre-emptive arrest to disrupt Climate Ground Zero’s activities?

We’ve spent 2009 escalating the fight to end mountaintop removal.  The coal industry spent 2009 escalating their rhetoric (example above) to cast us as “extremists” and “terrorists,” and encouraging intimidation and violence in the coalfields.  Now West Virginia law enforcement is arresting activists and lead organizers in Rock Creek on “old” charges.

Four Climate Ground Zero activists arrested today in Rock Creek, West Virginia.

Rock Creek, WV – At 3:47 pm, Tuesday, four Climate Ground Zero activists were arrested for trespass at their homes in Rock Creek, West Virginia. Matt Louis-Rosenberg, Jacqueline Quimby, Kimberly Ellis and James McGuiness were taken to the Kanawha County Courthouse by State Police. State Trooper Lt. Bowers. The charges stem from an October 10 demonstration at Walker CAT’s headquarters, which challenged Walker’s misleading pro-coal advertising campaign at which Gabe Schwartzman, 19, and David German, 18, were arrested by City of Belle Police and cited for trespassing on a structure or conveyance. The two had unfurled a banner which read, “Yes, Coal is Killing West Virginia’s Communities” .

More information as the situation develops. For more information, call Mike Roselle, Climate Ground Zero 304 854 7372.

Monthly page views since May '07 when we moved to wordpress.com. Stats calculated by wordpress.

The global youth movement came to a bit of a peak this month, and IGHIH not only reflected it, we wrote it as it was happening.  Just take a look at our monthly traffic over the past 3 years.  December was the biggest month by far, topping 100,000 views. An epic youth climate sit-in at the Bella Center in Copenhagen (live-blogged by Whit Jones), but it was by no means the only amazing instance of activists telling the story in their own words, and the world listening.

For commentary on the decade and the 5 year history of this site, other people will need to do step in, since I’ve only been involved here for 2 years.  But you’re in luck! In January, over a dozen veteran youth climate activists who’ve been involved here for longer than me will post as part of the “Climate Generation” series – stay tuned for updates.

Also in January, there will be a bit of an overhaul process.  We’ll start with a survey on how the site works for readers, writers and partner organizations.  That feedback will go into a proposal to make changes to how this whole thing works, which should start to be implemented by the end of the month.  We’ll be revamping the ‘events and opportunities’ page to make it easier to post and also overhauling the list of contributors and authors.  Lastly, the editorial board needs some fresh blood, and recruitment will start at the end of the month.  Like to promote the voices of the youth climate movement?  Lets talk.

Now to really geek out, here are this month’s most viewed posts, referring sites, web searches and outgoing links.  Hold your breath, hold it, hold it, here it is….

Most viewed posts which were posted in the past 30 days:
LIVE BLOG: Youth activists sit-in, refus 6,861
Corruption: Sarkozy, Obama Pressure Ethi 5,522
Crackdown in Copenhagen 2,378
Live Blog: Sit-In at the US State Depart 1,610
US Youth Crash Climate Denier Live Webca 1,501

Top referrers in the past 30 days (where people clicked a link to the blog):
facebook.com 3632
twitter.com 1,673
addisvoice.com (Linking to Corruption: Sarkozy, Obama Pressure Ethi) 686
huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/15/sarkozy… (Huffpo linked straight to Corruption: Sarkozy, Obama Pressure Ethi) 559
dirty.ru (Russian site linking to Crackdown in Copenhagen) 378

Top search terms (what people typed into a search engine to find us):
hummer 7,063
australia 1,832
japan 1,076
hummer h1 961
ethiopia 303

And, where people clicked to from our blog:
focusthenation.org 421
elysee.fr/documents/index.php?lang=fr… 415
powershift09.org/live 303
sweetmarias.com/map.australia.jpg 285
latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2… 211

While the international drama around the Copenhagen climate negotiations has unfolded this month, activists in Oregon have simultaneously been continuing the struggle to keep high-carbon liquefied natural gas (LNG) out of the western US.  This December saw several important developments in the fight – some good and some bad – which I’ve attempted to summarize below.  A quick preview of the highlights: US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (yeah it’s in Maryland, not Oregon) each took actions that spell hope for activists working to keep LNG out of Oregon, and out of the country.

At the beginning of this month, staff from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) visited Oregon to look at the environmental impacts of a proposed LNG pipeline which would ship imported gas from the Columbia River to the California market.  I wrote about this visit in detail earlier, but it’s worth repeating that students from Linfield College and Pacific University turned out in force for the event, to express youth concerns to FERC.  FERC has already established a trend in Oregon of rubber-stamping LNG infrastructure without fully considering the environmental and economic impacts for Oregon. 

On December 8th, the Hey! Northwest Natural campaign staged a press conference on the steps of Northwest Natural Gas headquarters, urging one of Oregon’s largest energy companies to pull its support of the Palomar LNG Pipeline.  Northwest Natural has been feeling increasing amounts of heat from activists as it becomes clear the company is bottom-lining a project hurtful to Oregon’s environment, economy, and ratepayers.

As of early this month FERC had already approved one LNG import terminal in Oregon, the Bradwood Landing terminal – this out of a total of three proposed terminals, each of which connects to proposed pipelines.  That FERC decision is already being challenged in court by the State of Oregon and others, and is far from a done deal.  Despite serious concerns over the flawed Bradwood approval process however, FERC later this month granted approval to a second import terminal - the Jordan Cove project on Coos Bay.  The State of Oregon immediately announced plans to sue, citing concerns similar to those expressed over Bradwood.  The Bradwood Landing project can no longer be considered an isolated case, and FERC has now clearly established a trend of ignoring Oregon’s concerns and rubber-stamping LNG projects without sufficiently addressing the environmental impacts. 

Next, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to FERC asking that the commission investigate citizen complaints stemming from this month’s site visits.  It seems Senator Wyden is particularly concerned about the fact that the FERC-orchestrated tour gave LNG industry representatives an opening to abuse the rights of impacted landowners.  Wyden is spot-on in this analysis: industry reps from the corporation Oregon LNG accompanied FERC on the site visits, and were found on one property gathering GPS readings after being specifically notified by the landowners that they were only allowed to gather visual information.  FERC staff present at the time made no move to criticize this abuse (see my earlier post on the site visits).

Finally, on the other side of the country the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals clearly established that state governments have the right to reject an LNG terminal, even after it has been approved by FERC.  FERC previously approved the AES Sparrows Point LNG terminal in Maryland; the project was then blocked by the state, which denied final permits based on concerns that it didn’t meet Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act requirements.  The LNG company sued over the state’s decision, but lost the case this month when the Fourth Circuit ruled that Maryland has the right to reject an LNG terminal.  Considering that Maryland’s concerns about LNG were very similar to Oregon’s, this decision paves the way for Oregon to reject LNG proposals in the face of FERC approval.  Though I can’t speak for the folks in Maryland, I assume it’s good news for climate activists there as well.  The AES Sparrows Point project is now almost certainly dead.

This month it’s become abundantly clear that unless we see a change of leadership in FERC, the commission charged with approving large energy projects in the US cannot be counted on to protect the interests of local communities.  Our victory in this fight may ultimately depend on the State of Oregon following Maryland’s lead in denying LNG permits, and on grassroots activism that continues to put pressure on the companies responsible for LNG projects.  FERC may have failed Oregon citizens, but we’ll keep up the pressure until we win.

I probably don’t even need to provide a link to “How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room,”  Mark Lynas’s recent Guardian article that has found itself at the center of so many a post-Copenhagen conversation.  Chances are you’ve read it.  Just in case: Of China’s role in this month’s round of UN climate talks, Lynas says, “China’s strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world’s poor once again.”

Interestingly, the rest of Lynas’s analysis hinges on assessing China’s behavior in the final hours of negotiations.  Likewise, little of the deluge of external analysis since has focused on China’s behavior earlier in the Copenhagen negotiations.  It would be helpful to see a detailed play-by-play analysis of China’s interventions, press statements, internal strategy etc. during and in the lead-up to Copenhagen as well as during those final few hours.  When, exactly, was the moment where China went from reluctant US “ally” to reinvigorated adversary?   How much of the behind-the-scenes camaraderie had been an act all along, and how much was genuine?  And if it had once been genuine, where did it break down?  If anyone knows of such an analysis, please point me to it.  In the meantime, I will focus for the moment, as Lynas does, on what happened (or didn’t) on that fateful final Friday, what we can learn from it, and equally importantly, what we can’t.

Lynas emphatically conveys a very important message: Global geopolitics have changed, and advocacy groups’ strategies need to change, too.  These days, he points out, “developed countries bad, developing countries good” is too simple and outmoded a paradigm.  Message received, loud and clear.  But to focus singly on China’s “bad guy” role in closed-door climate negotiations with the US and a handful of other countries is problematic as well, and neglects to account for a whole host of factors and actors which could have prevented a down-to-the-wire-emergency-closed-room-China-decides-so-much situation in the first place. Allowing that China’s position was problematic, and that moving forward, we need smarter strategies for current geopolitics, there are at least four other big picture lessons here about what absolutely must go differently in the future:

1.    Don’t leave everything to the 11th hour
Copenhagen marked the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties, and two whole years since the Bali Action Plan supposedly put the world on the path to agreeing the next global climate treaty.   In the Copenhagen fallout, pundits have become very focused on debating the implications of a few maneuvers made by a few actors in the final days and hours of the negotiations.  It seems the question we really should be asking is: with so much at stake, why was so much left to those hours—and for that matter, those few individuals—to  decide?

2.    You can’t wreck a wreck
“I saw Obama fighting desperately to salvage a deal,” says Lynas of Friday’s closed-door meetings. Which begs the question—Was President Obama trying to salvage a deal, any deal? What exactly was the substance of the deal he was trying to save?  Elsewhere, Lynas applauds:  “The US put serious cuts on the table for the first time (17% below 2005 levels by 2020).”  Serious cuts?  Really? A 17% cut below 2005 levels translates roughly to a paltry 4% below 1990 levels by 2020…that’s significantly less ambitious than what the US would have committed to had it ratified to the Kyoto Protocol.  More importantly, whatever your take on what countries should be responsible for what portion of a shared global goal, a short-term reduction of 4% on 1990 levels from the US clearly falls far short of what the latest science demands.   The oft-cited IPCC recommended range for developed country cuts is some 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020.  Coupled with significant deviation from business as usual in the developing world and action over the long-term, a short-term developed country cut of 25-40% would give the global community a chance, but by no means a certainty, of avoiding catastrophic climate change.  Unfortunately, at a time when our national leaders and most brilliant brains should be working out how to make short-term cuts even more aggressive than that range, they seem to be busy figuring out how to sell sub-par (and for many countries, sub-survival) ambition instead.   Surely that’s the bigger tragedy here?

3.    Negotiate in the open
Anyone familiar with the international climate negotiations knows too well that albeit with some notable exceptions, the large, publically accessible plenary meetings often turn into a sort of public theater or an exercise in forgone conclusions.  By the time a particularly substantive or contentious issue comes up in a plenary meeting, most of the discussion and confrontation has already happened in smaller informal meetings closed to press and civil society, with the deals being struck in these closed-door informals and bilateral meetings and in phone calls bouncing between the negotiations and key players at home. Admittedly, there are sometimes very valid reasons to pursue small closed-door meetings:  smaller group can work through difficult issues more quickly, a private setting allows for necessarily frank conversations, etc.   However, in Copenhagen, a key opportunity was lost to use a more transparent and inclusive process, open to civil society observers and the media, to arrive at the final agreement language, and in so doing expose or prevent obstructionism by using the powerful presence of other nations, civil society, and press to keep parties accountable for their behavior.  Whatever China did or didn’t do, they had the cover of a closed-door meeting in which to do it. Lynas argues that many civil society and environmental groups have missed the boat and misinterpreted the Copenhagen story.  Having access to the conversation would surely help ensure we get it right next time—not only for our sakes, but for the sake of the process and the sake of the climate as well.

4.    Climate negotiations are rarely just about climate change,
aka understanding and communicating  national needs in cross-cultural contexts
Lynas rightly notes,  “Above all, Obama needed to be able to demonstrate to the Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation framework…” What about China? What did China need?  I imagine China needed to assert its power and show it could stand up to the US, not dissimilar to the way in which the US needed to show its people it had stood up to China.  I recognize that the US team likely felt blind-sided by China’s aggression in the second week of the climate talks, but I can’t help but wonder—up until that point, what, if anything, was the shared US-China strategy to ensure both countries got the public image they needed to help deliver the agreement the world needed? Was there a mutually choreographed scenario in which the US team would get to say domestically—however disingenuously—“Hey Senate!  China’s taking more action because we told them to!” that would simultaneously allow China to say that it had shown itself a power to rival or exceed the US and had affirmed its rightful position on the world stage?  If there was no such strategy…why not?  And if there was…why did it fall apart?

So yes, China’s role in Copenhagen was hugely important, and China’s importance moving forward cannot be overstated.  But please, let’s recognize that that observation alone does not absolve anyone else of responsibility for their role in Copenhagen or for their future actions.  Obstructionism by China or no, frantic 11th-hour closed-door negotiations for a scientifically and legally inadequate deal drafted largely outside the agreed process was never likely to provide a feel-good conclusion for countries, much less the climate.  So please, let’s get done with the finger-pointing, absorb the four (plus) bigger picture lessons here, and get on with building trust back into the negotiating process and using what precious little time we have left to work long and hard and in the open, on the basis of science and survival and legally binding commitments.  And together, let’s take some action and get some satisfaction.