Confronting Confluent Crises – Housing, Finance, Climate, Extinction
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Crises are hard to count because they depend on point of view. To shareholders in the financial services sector there is an international finance crisis. To the newly homeless, there is a housing crisis. These two crises are joined at the bank – in this case Bank of America. Climate change meets at the bank too. Harvard Fellow Robert Rubin’s Citibank has a major stack in coal. The number of crises depends on the time scale you choose – global climate change being the most imminent. But bioaccumulation1 assures a very long list of toxic pollutants each with it’s own environmental consequence. The current cost effective mining technique – mount top removal – assures that vegetation is obliterated, streams are filled in as well as polluted which translates to loss of habitat for species etc.
A two local groups and a local chapters of a national group met to confront these crises and shut down Citibank in Harvard Square. [Photo Open Media Boston]
Jason Pramas of Open Media Boston reports (in text and video) that Rising Tide Boston, City Life/Vida Urbana, and Rainforest Action Network2 joined in non-violent civil disobedience shutting down Citibank in Harvard Square.
1This wikipedia page is barely adequate. An important concept deserves much better. If you don’t have the stomach to go eye-ball to eye-ball with the ruling class, you can fix the “bioaccumulation” wikipedia page. It won’t make them made at you.
2Their report on the protest. I wanted you to see their home page. I’m green with envy, but trying to be the bigger man. 🙁 They were on Democracy Now to debate whether “Clean Coal” makes any sense.
… and when I get back from dinner, more on the International Forum on Globalization Teach-In; Confronting the Global Triple Crisis
- previous:
- Dung Deal: Déjà Vu All Over Again*
- next:
- Beyond Vietnam, Beyond Iraq.
