The Canary Coalition a grassroots clean air movement

The Ford Dealership in Sylva, NC is providing this 2008 four-wheel drive hybrid Escape for a Canary Coalition fundraising raffle. We are able to move the vehicle on a trailer for display at different venues where we can table and sell raffle tickets. Volunteers are needed to help with this effort. Please contact the office, 828-631-3447 or send an email to info@canarycoalition.org to volunteer your time. Tickets for the raffle are $50 each. The drawing will be held when 1200 tickets are sold.

Asheville Rising Tide, NIRS, and the Canary Coalition
present: Carbon Trading: Solution to Climate Change or Corporate Resource Grab?

Join us for an evening of conversation with author
Larry Lohmann about climate change, privatization and
power.

Sunday, November 11, 5:30pm at the Movement & Learning Center (above Broad Food Co-op)
90 Biltmore Ave. in downtown Asheville
Tea and cookies will be served.

Already a huge force in Europe, Carbon Trading is now
starting to establish itself in the US as governments’
and corporations’ primary way of addressing the climate
crisis. But what does it mean for the biggest polluters
to be handed de facto property rights over our
atmosphere?

In this talk, Lohmann will focus on the social and
environmental impacts of emissions trading and carbon
offsets, why failed approaches are so popular among the
world’s elites, and what the US can now learn from the
rest of the world. He will explore the connections
between carbon trading and neoliberalism, the
similarities between Bush’s approach and that of the
Kyoto Protocol, and how we can organize for more
effective, community-based approaches to the climate
crisis.

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In 2004, the Durban Group for Climate Justice convened
in Durban, South Africa to question the central role of
carbon trading in official responses to the climate
crisis. This November, Larry Lohmann, a founding member
of the Durban Group, is traveling through the eastern
US to share experiences of the failures of carbon
trading in Europe, India, Brazil, Uganda and elsewhere.

Since 1997, Lohmann has worked with the Corner House, a
research and solidarity organization based in the UK
(http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk). During the 1980s he
lived and worked in Thailand, teaching and working with
local environmental groups. He has degrees from Cornell
and Princeton and has been a visiting fellow at Yale
University. His articles on globalization, racism,
environmental conflict in Southeast Asia and the
discourses of population and neoclassical economics
have appeared in journals such as Science as Culture,
New Scientist, Asian Survey, International Journal of
Pollution and Environment, Bulletin of Concerned Asian
Scholars, Development Dialogue, Red Pepper, Foreign
Policy in Focus, Development Today, Environmental
Conservation, Comciencia, and Watershed, as well as in
numerous scholarly books. Over 350,000 copies of his
latest book, Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on
Climate Change, Privatization and Power (2006) have
been downloaded from the internet.

Carbon trading “dispossesses ordinary people in the
South of their lands and futures without resulting in
appreciable progress toward alternative energy
systems,” says Larry Lohmann. “Tradable rights to
pollute are handed out to Northern industry, allowing
them to continue to profit from business as usual. At
the same time, Northern polluters are encouraged to
invest in supposedly carbon-saving projects in the
South, very few of which promote clean energy at all.
“Most of the carbon credits being sold to industrialized
countries,” Lohmann continues, “come from polluting
projects that do nothing to reduce fossil fuel use,
such as schemes that burn methane from coal mines or
waste dumps. The bulk of fossil fuels must be left in
the ground if climate chaos is to be avoided.”

Dr. James Hansen to Speak in North Carolina

AVERTING CLIMATE CATASTROPHE:

Power Plants or Clean Energy – Who Decides?

Dr. James Hansen, the nation’s foremost climate scientist, will speak at forums in Charlotte and Chapel Hill on the need for major reductions in greenhouse gases within ten years – before climate disruption becomes irreversible.

November 16, 7pm - Queens University of Charlotte

November 17, 3pm - The Friday Center, Chapel Hill

Membership Renewal Reminder

If you have not already done so, please renew your annual membership with the Canary Coalition and help keep the database updated with your most recent contact information. There is no mandatory annual membership fee, although all donations are gratefully accepted (and very much needed). Average individual member donations are about $35. Businesses about $100.

All new and renewing members receive the interactive membership computer CD. The membership CD is a powerful tool that aids its owner in being a clean-air activist. It contains a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation about air quality issues and the Canary Coalition that can be shown to friends, groups, classrooms, etc. Also on the membership CD is a library of documents containing information about important air quality issues. There are also graphics for iron-on applications, printable membership forms and a link to the Canary Coalition website.

We will also include a bumper sticker for any renewal or new membership that includes a donation.

Send updated contact information and donations to:

The Canary Coalition

PO Box 653

Sylva, NC 28779