Maxey: US must take action, because our communities are dying

by Tim McSorley

Ahmina Maxey of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance at the Climate Justice Now! press conference, Friday, December 9:

"Offsets, including REDD* and other offsets like that, pushed forward by the US are being felt in my community. The Marathon oil refinery, which is in my city of Detroit, Michigan, is being expanded to process tar sands that could potentially come from Canada. We are asking that Obama reject, not reroute, the Keystone XL pipeline and we are here to support a moratorium on REDD.

"We are also here to demand that the United States take action (on climate change), because it is our communities that suffer, our communities that die. My community dies from asthma at twice the national rate. I'm here becuase my family is dying."

*Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. On paper, it focusses on financing projects in poorer countries to protect or replant forests, which are used as carbon offsets (ie, buy a tree in Nicaragua to offset your plane trip to a Cuban resort). In reality, there is more and more evidence that these projects are displacing small and peasant farmers or are being used fradulently to allow companies to continue to pollute while claiming they are offsetting their impact. For more on the concerns about REDD, visit the No REDD Popular Education blog at http://noreddpoped.makenoise.org/

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