Barlow and McKibben Photo credit: Carleen Pickard
Bill McKibben is a well-known American climate change activist, author, journalist, and founder of 350.org.
He has endorsed the call for a non-violent civil disobedience action at Parliament Hill on Monday September 26 to protest the northern Alberta tar sands. He himself was arrested on August 20 for participating in a peaceful direct action sit-in near the White House that demanded that US President Obama not approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10053.
In early-September, the Globe and Mail reported, “McKibben said civil disobedience would be employed again against Keystone on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 26, and during the final months in the U.S. ahead of Mr. Obama’s decision. ‘We need to find a different currency to work in and for the past two weeks that currency was our bodies,’ said Mr. McKibben. ‘The odds, I suppose, remain against us but we’ll continue to use our wits, creativity and our bodies. Canada will be the next locus for civil disobedience.’”
McKibben has joined with the Council of Canadians on numerous efforts. He has a video featured on our systemchange.ca project website launched last week, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10690. The previous week he issued a statement of support, as did we, for the Kainai Earth Watch activists peacefully blocking the road needed for fracking on the Blood Reserve in Alberta, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10399. And he and Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow spoke on a panel in Cancun, during the climate talks there in December 2010, on how labour and the environmental movement can work better together to address climate change, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=4832.
Last night, he received an award for his activism from the Sierra Club. Barlow also received an award at this same ceremony in San Francisco, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=10488. McKibben told the audience that there would be another peaceful direct action – an encircling of the White House – against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, DC on Sunday November 6.
For more on McKibben, please go to http://www.billmckibben.com/. For his reflection on being arrested – published in the Huffington Post and the Toronto Star – go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/white-house-arrest_b_936175.html.
