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[Steve Donziger] We are calling on the UN to launch an investigation into the case against Greenpeace

What do you think when you watch the Trump Administration abduct foreign students and lock them up in ICE detention centers? Or when you see legal immigrants snatched from their communities and dumped into a gulag in El Salvador?

For me, it is a stark reminder of how fragile our justice system can be. 

It is clear to me that these vicious attacks on vulnerable people and SLAPP harassment lawsuits brought against environmental groups like Greenpeace are deeply interconnected. It’s all about attacking the rule of law.

That is why we must work together to defend the climate justice movement and our country from one of the most dangerous threats we have ever faced.

I want to give you a quick update.

In North Dakota, with trial monitors (from R to L) Marty Garbus, Sara Vogel and Scott Badenoch

As a result of a patently unfair trial in a pro-Trump county in North Dakota, Greenpeace was hit last month with an utterly grotesque $669 million jury verdict.
This was the largest damages judgment against a climate group in history. 

The case against Greenpeace – a SLAPP harassment lawsuit – was brought by Trump’s friend and billionaire oil tycoon Kelcy Warren. Warren said in an interview that climate activists “should be removed from the gene pool” because they are bad for the country.

The rhetoric is hateful. But it’s also coldly calculated.

With legendary civil rights attorney Marty Garbus in front of the courthouse in Morton County, North Dakota

This verdict that was essentially bought by Warren is an attack not just on a major environmental organization, but also an attack on the entire climate justice movement.

We are fighting back and we need your help. Our plan is to deliver a major blow to Warren and other oligarchs who think they can silence our movement with abusive lawsuits.

We made our first move this week. 
We sent a powerful 7-page letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights asking that the trial against Greenpeace in North Dakota be put squarely on the international stage. We also are pushing for UN officials to launch an investigation into the flagrant violations of Greenpeace’s fair trial rights.

This letter was released by the independent trial monitoring team that I helped organize. The team includes the legendary attorney Marty Garbus, who represented Nelson Mandela and Daniel Ellsberg.

There is no doubt that the verdict against Greenpeace poses a grave threat to free speech, the rule of law, judicial fairness, and Indigenous rights.

That threat is being turbo-charged right now by Trump and his attacks on the rule of law.

Greenpeace was a stand-in for all of us. The group just took a major bullet for our movement and the planet. Now, we must do all we can to protect Greenpeace and the broader right to advocate. That is so necessary to save our planet and what’s left of our democracy.

We need resources to spread this work far and wide. Funds will be used to write and publish a comprehensive report on the trial – and enlist what we will hope will be hundreds of attorneys and scholars from around the world to support our findings.

This is what we believe is the best way to protect Greenpeace and our right to protest. 

I know that major events are moving at a dizzying pace. I am asking each of you to take the time to focus for a few minutes on this one opportunity.

Please join us as we work to help protect human rights and our sacred right to protest in the age of Trump’s attacks on the rule of law. Donate $50, $25, $500, $15, $1000, $5, $5,000 or whatever you can today.

I know all of you care profoundly about these issues and have gone to great lengths to support my advocacy. I remain deeply grateful. Let’s keep rolling! 
Thank you,

Steven Donziger

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1099263962219881/?

Climate Criminality’: Australia OKs Biggest Coal Mine

In a decision criticized as “climate criminality,” Australia's federal government announced Monday that it has given the OK to the country's biggest coal mine.

The announcement comes less than three months after the state of Queensland gave its approval to the project.

“With this decision,” wrote Ben Pearson, head of programs for Greenpeace Australia Pacific, “the political system failed to protect the Great Barrier Reef, the global climate and our national interest.”

“Off the back of repealing effective action on climate change,” stated Australian Greens environment spokesperson Senator Larissa Waters, referring to the scrapping of the carbon tax, “the Abbott Government has ticked off on a proposal for Australia’s biggest coal mine to cook the planet and turn our Reef into a super highway for coal ships.”

Adani Mining expects its Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project in Queensland's Galilee Basin to produce up to 60 million tonnes of coal a year, most of which will be sent to India. A rail line will be created from the mine to a new coal port terminal, an expansion which means up to 3 million meters of dredging waste will be dumped in the area of the World Heritage-listed Reef.

UNESCO “noted with concern” (pdf) in April the prospect of additional dredging that would negatively impact the Reef and warned that the site could be added to the List of World Heritage in Danger.

The approval for the Carmichael project came from Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt with “36 strict conditions”—conditions that did nothing to allay the environmental fears raised by critics.

Felicity Wishart, Great Barrier Reef Campaign Manager for the Australian Marine Conservation Society, stated that the conditions would be “laughable, if they weren’t so serious.”

Wishart also accused the Queensland and federal government of “watering down environmental protections and fast-tracking approvals for new ports and LNG plants on the Great Barrier Reef.”

“The Federal government has fast-tracked industrialization along the Reef because it is too close to the mining industry,” she stated.

Pearson also admonished the close ties, saying in a statement, “The Federal Environment Minister has laid out the red carpet for a coal company with a shocking track record to dig up the outback, dump on the Great Barrier Reef and fuel climate change.”

Amongst Greenpeace's list of why the project shouldn't go ahead is that

[t]he mine would steal precious water. The mine requires 12 gigaliters (12 billion liters) of water each year from local rivers and underground aquifers. That’s enough drinking water for every Queenslander for three years. Even ten kilometers away, water tables are expected to drop by over one meter.

In addition to the dangers of dredging up the sea-bed, the list adds:

The burning of coal from Carmichael mine would produce four times the fossil fuel emissions of New Zealand. It is a catastrophe for the climate.

“History will look back on the Abbott Government’s decision today as an act of climate criminality,” Waters stated. More

 

Greenpeace Australia Pacific created this infographic to highlight what the group sees as risks the Carmichael mine poses: