Broadly speaking: the future of life on Earth.
More specifically, in the Northern Rockies area of what is referred to as the United States of America (a.k.a. occupied Native territory), ExxonMobile and other international criminal organizations are attempting to transform the Hyw. 12 National Scenic Byway–a breathtaking, mountainous corridor that slithers along the Clearwater and Lochsa Rivers through northern Idaho, over Lolo Pass, and into western Montana–into a “high and wide” industrial shipping corridor for Big Oil.
Of special concern is the fact that the proposed corridor would constitute a permanent alternative route for transporting enormous strip-mining modules to the Alberta Tar Sands, one of the most destructive industrial projects on the planet.
What began as a small grassroots campaign spearheaded by Northern Rockies Rising Tide has evolved into a regional movement which has successfully halted the contruction of Exxon’s proposed Kearl tar sands mine in northern Alberta by means of public demonstrations and paper-wrenching.
Earth First!, of course, is a movement of movements, and one of the main goals of this year’s EF! Round River Rendezvous is to invigorate, expand, and strengthen connections between the plethora of campaigns working to end hydrocarbon extraction and environmental and social injustice in the Intermountain West. From the struggle against the Border Industrial Complex and racist immigration policies in southern Arizona, to the fight against peabody coal on Black Mesa, to the oil and natural gas fields of Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado and the coal mines of the Powder River Basin, to the fight to save the last remaining wild Buffalo in the US.
More Information:
The Tar Sands:
“Alberta sits over one of the largest recoverable oil patches in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. It covers 149, 000 square kilometers, an area larger than Florida, and holds at least 175 billion barrels of recoverable crude bitumen. Canada has become the largest supplier of oil to the U.S., with over a million barrels per day coming from the oil sands. Currently 40% of all oil produced in Canada is derived from the oil sands. The crude oil produced from the oil sands, the dirtiest oil in the world, could keep the global appetite for oil at bay for another 50 years. But oil sands are a fundamentally different kind of oil. They take a lot of energy and a lot of water and leave a very large environmental footprint compared to all other forms of oil extraction. Because of this, the massive changes to the boreal forest and the watershed have prompted the United Nations to list this region as a global hot spot for environmental change. In addition, oil sands projects are major emitters of greenhouse gases. They accounted for 4% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, making it impossible to meet obligations set out in Kyoto for emissions-reductions.”
For more information about Alberta’s tar sands, check out this fact sheet.
More Information on ….
Powder River Basin Coal / Coalbed Methane
Nuclear Power and Weapons Testing
2011 Earth First! Round River Rendezvous Defend the Rockies! Shut Down the Tar Sands! 