Eleven Greenpeace members were arrested Wednesday for mounting a protest on the granite presidential faces of Mount Rushmore National Memorial to urge President Obama to "show real leadership on global warming."
Park staff were alerted by security systems at 10:11 a.m., local time that a number of individuals had breached a controlled area and accessed the top of the monument. While the climbers were able to unfurl a 65-foot-by-35-foot banner next to Abraham Lincoln's face, they were arrested shortly thereafter and taken to Rapid City, South Dakota, and jailed. Possible charges range from trespass to destruction of government property.
Park workers planned to assess the monument for any damage and were to remove the banner as soon as they could safely do so.
National Park Service officials would not say how the 11 managed to evade Mount Rushmore's security systems, reach the top of the monument, and rappel down its face, nor would they describe what security measures are employed at Mount Rushmore.
The banner draped across the front of the monument featured an unfinished portrait of President Obama with the message, "America honors leaders not politicians: Stop Global Warming."
The demonstration comes as President Obama met with other G8 leaders in L'Aquila, Italy, on Wednesday to discuss the global warming crisis in the lead-up to UN climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen this December.
"This monument celebrates leaders who rose to the great challenges of our past. Global warming is the greatest crisis humankind has ever faced and it is the defining test of leadership for this generation. It's an open question whether President Obama will pass that test," said Greenpeace USA Deputy Campaigns Director Carroll Muffett.
According to a Greenpeace release the activists were trained in rock and industrial climbing and took special care not to damage the monument, using existing anchors placed by the National Park Service for periodic cleanings.
The demonstration followed a series of protests in Italy earlier Wednesday where other Greenpeace activists hung banners on coal plant smokestacks calling attention to the collective failure of leadership on global warming at the G8.
"We're at a moment in history where President Obama must show real leadership on global warming, not only for Congress and the American people, but for the world. Unfortunately, the steps taken to address the crisis so far have been grossly inadequate," said Muffett. "While President Obama's speeches on global warming have been inspiring, we've seen a growing gap between the president's words and his actions."
According to Greenpeace, "the best science shows that to avoid catastrophic global warming, governments must take action to keep global temperature rise as far below 2 degrees Celsius as possible.
"Given President Obama's pledge to follow the science, it's troubling that his administration has not yet endorsed emission targets strong enough to keep us below that critical threshold," the activist group said.
Furthermore, the group, said, the experience earlier this year "with climate legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, which was drastically weakened by lobbyists for the oil and coal industries and other big polluters, showed that unless the president provides strong leadership on this issue, special interests will win out over the common interest."
"Doing what it takes to solve global warming demands real political courage," Muffett added. "If President Obama intends to earn a place among this country's true leaders, he needs to show that courage, and base his actions on the scientific reality rather than political convenience."
Greenpeace is calling on President Obama to use every tool at his disposal, both within and outside Congress, to strengthen U.S. climate policy with scientific integrity, and to take that policy to Copenhagen in December as evidence the U.S. will do what it takes to solve the climate crisis.
Specifically, Greenpeace is calling on President Obama to:
* Strive to keep global temperatures as far below a 2 degrees Celsius increase as possible, compared to pre-industrial levels to avert catastrophic climate change;
* Set a goal of peaking global emissions by 2015 and be as close to zero as possible by 2050, compared to 1990 levels;
* Cut emissions in the U.S. by 25-40 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels;
* Join and encourage other members of the G8 to establish a funding mechanism that provides $106 billion per year by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to global warming impacts that are now unavoidable and halt tropical deforestation.
Greenpeace is also calling on President Obama to attend the Copenhagen conference personally to ensure a strong, science-based agreement is reached.
Comments
Hey Smokey, exactly how will Al Gore make millions off of a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Your position on nuclear power suggests that you aren't aware of the overall costs of design, licensing, construction, operation and regulation of these highly complex facilities, let alone the fact that there is presently no long-term storage solution in place for high-level nuclear wastes, other than to store spent fuel rods onsite submerged in deep water pools.
How many years will it take for the initiation of plans for new nuclear facilities today for them to go online in the future? And, if all of them were to go online 10 to 20 years from now, what fraction of the overall carbon footprint would be deflected?
What impact would this ultimately have on global climate? Once they go online, where is the high-level nuclear waste stored?
Like Kurt, I have a high level of trust in the findings and conclusions of the IPCC report. I disagree with you about global warming being a hoax.
Owen Hoffman
Oak Ridge, TN 37830
Good for Greenpeace !! They aren't sitting behind a computer screen, without any information, whinning about things they know NOTHING ABOUT. How exactly do you make a difference? The climbers ARE very experienced climbers and did indeed use the hooks that are there for park service personnel to use to periodically clean. Laughable that the Park Service said that they "got them down safely". They weren't on their job, period. Reports of the greenpeace climbers were in leg chains, that's a bunch of BS too. Greenpeace is a non profit, environmentally aware organization. They ACTUALLY put there money where their mouth is.....AND YOU? Some who post, speak of shooting people, is that your position on anyone that disagrees with your opinion? SHAMEFUL..... Greenpeace will continue to move forward, despite you, and help save this planet we all live on, and for your children, grandchildren, and future generations........GOOD JOB, GREENPEACE !!!!!
Visitors may be regretful of their first and possibly only visit to the monument being "spoiled" by the Greenpeace banner, similar to the way I felt while traveling to Europe and even Washington DC and had sights I had longed all my life to see covered with scaffolding for "cleaning and maintenance" that have spoiled the vistas for years and years. I wonder if these same visitors would have protested their disappointment if it were NPS employees obscuring their view to maintain the monument. I am mindful of the forethought and planning of the demonstration that brought no harm to the monument. These were not paint throwers or people with axes and sledge hammers in hand (which has occurred) but people who voluntarily, routinely put their lives in jeopardy to try to protect the planet and bring notice to the world of the harm we people do to our planet and its inhabitants who have just as much right to live as humans do. As far as I can tell from the news and the postings here, they did no more harm as the people who hang banners and wave from overpasses proclaiming a welcome to our American forces who return home after serving their country by trying to bring liberty to peoples around the world as well as protecting our own. Nothing has been said about the NPS personnel having to go up and force them down or having to mount major repair efforts to mend the damage they did not do, only to remove the banner. I'd be honored to join them in hugging a whale. How many of the so rightous here would be willing to join them in putting their lives in jeopardy to save the life of one of the most magnificant creatures to have ever lived on this earth, one that causes no harm but actually has a role to play in keeping this planet healthy, certainly a more nobel being than what most of those here claim humanity to be.
As for you who idolize Al Gore, please go back and examine his carbon footprint. While I'm not an educated scientist or even as acedemically elevated as some here proclaim to be, you don't have to be brilliant to discover that Al Gore himself and his wife, while espousing programs which would make life less livable for those of us who are not as financially priviledged as they are, lives in a mansion that would house a large homeless shelter, all that resource eating space for just 2 people because they have the financial ability to take up more of the world's resources than they need or deserve, drive several cars, travel around by private jet whenever they feel like it...on and on. Get real; their example is false as they do not live in line with what they expouse. Your idol does not live by the same standards he espouses for the rest of us. Your promotion of the man degrades your postings here that might have otherwise carried some weight for some of us.
I'm sorry for the people of Appalachia who were harmed by the toxic sludge. I applaud any regulation that would stop this from happening again, except cap and trade bill. Work needs to be done to clean up our energy sources, not throw us back into the dark ages, literally, when we have to resort to wood burning fireplaces and candles to keep warm and bring light into our homes. According to the global warming proponents, wood burning stoves cause serious polution also so do you propose that we all huddle in our beds wrapped in blankets 24-hours a day in order to be warm enough to even survive. Look at the statistics of any large-ish city of those old and poor who die in their homes during periods of cold or heat because they cannot afford to bring live giving power into their homes, yet cap and trade would raise that cost and many more will be unable to afford survival. So I'm interested, when are you going to pass legislation to cap and trade Mt. St. Helens which spewed toxic waste and floods of mud which destroyed many homes and killed people. Surely you can't be so ready to blame that on humanity as you are global warming.
Just a few thoughts on the postings here. I love our national parks also but why not complain about the financial explotation that our government allows in them instead of people who are trying to protect our planet?
Owen - here's the info on Al Gore's windfall:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10252910-54.html
As far as your arguments regarding nuclear power go, did you read anything from the website I provided? The arguments you're using are obsolete. Nuclear technology has come a long way since the 1970s.
Finally, the IPCC report is one analysis - what about the 31,000, and growing, number of scientists who say that global warming is bogus? How can you say the IPCC owns the truth? You're taking it on pure faith.
Going back to Roger Revelle, Al Gore's global warming mentor. Revelle has backed away from his findings, stating that the true impact of carbon dioxide was not at all certain.
That sludge spill, incidentally, was nothing to sneeze at. It was 1.1 billions gallons of nasty, heavy-metal laced muck. That's 3 times the Marin County Spill of 2000, or 50 times bigger than Exxon Valdez...
Greenpeace is nothing but a bunch of media hams masquerading as environmentalists. Any steps which help the environment have resulted from members of real environmental organizations doing the real work.
"As for the Earth warming, that remains to be seen. (The global temperature anomaly in January was 0.00 deg. C., the trough of the solar cycle.) There are some who are also critical of computer models that make very general predictions based on some flawed data sets. But go ahead and discredit those criticisms as being based from "CTT"s; nice ad hominem, attacking the source rather than the claim."
If climatologists really aren't in doubt about global climate change, let alone anthropogenic climate change, then the "claims" to the contrary being made should withstand the vetting process of peer review. They tend not to. While I don't worship at the altar of science, I think at least the scientific process is the best thing we've got going in terms of what's truly fueling climate change. However, there is no such checks and balances process in the open market, and anyone may print anything at any time that may sound good but ultimately be pernicious. All sorts of ideas may be promulgated, true and false. When it comes to climate change, I am no expert, and neither are most of us. It sounds simple enough to look at graphs and draw conclusions, but it seems to me that the earth is such a complex system that matters such as climate change tend not to be so simple to our (untrained) eyes as we might think. Thus, I am highly skeptical (how about that!) of people who are not trained climatologists telling me what's happening to the earth (or, more accurately, saying what's not happening to the earth). If this errs me on the side of "bowing down to the liberal elite academic experts," so be it: we all must bow to something here. At some point we must take a "leap of faith" to trust in some truth. For the skeptic, that leap is to the "I don't know" position, which simply requires distancing from the argument.
With some notable exceptions, most folks crying "foul" are lawyers and economists (and it is further sad to me that the division of pro/anti climate change seems to happen strongly along party lines). Lawyers and economists certainly have the freedom and right to do this (it's a free country), and they may or may not have good arguments (i.e., just because they are lawyers and economists doesn't mean they don't have good arguments). But while you're suggesting I'm simply diverting the issue by casting an ad hominem argument against CTTs and not addressing the issues themselves, I think it is a significant issue that an (largely) untrained, extremely well-funded movement has the clear goal of obfuscating the public so that any kind of legislation that helps the environment (and even smells anti-free market) gets slogged down by specious counter-claims that sound good but ultimately are quickly shaken off by those who study this stuff as their life's work. The environmental skeptic movement is far, far better at idea dissemination than are scientists. I disagree that I'm making an ad hominem argument here, but if I am, at least it seems extraordinarily relevant to me that there is a clear agenda on the part of CTTs and this is fueling much of the environmental skepticism movement and casting a very distinct light on the arguments they foment.
Coal is the future....plain and simple.