Rainforest Action Network believes that corporate exploitation of coal and oil is a crime that demands bold and strident resistance. Everyday, RAN challenges corporate power with hard-hitting campaigns that prioritize the long-term health of our local communities and our global climate.
Coal
Coal is the biggest single source of carbon pollution in the U.S. To protect our climate and public health, we must decrease our country’s reliance on coal and destabilize the power of the coal industry while building demand for a clean energy economy. Over the last few years, the anti-coal movement has seen significant victories: cancelling 150 proposed coal fired power plants and significantly reducing mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining in Appalachia. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has played an important role in these battles: pushing the banking industry to address their financing of new coal and MTR and pushing the U.S. Administration to tighten their enforcement of surface mining.
Tar Sands
From pressuring President Obama to deny the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, to standing with First Nations and other impacted communities, to telling the big banks to stop underwriting tar sands exploitation, RAN has been on the frontlines of stopping the insanity of developing Canada’s tar sands, the second largest pool of carbon found on the planet.
Some examples of our work in coal and tar sands:
Direct Action
When negotiation, grassroots organizing and public pressure fail to convince a corporation to do the right thing, RAN does not shy away from utilizing creative, nonviolent civil disobedience to make sure our message is heard.
VIDEO: The Tar Sands Action Was Just Phase One
The Tar Sands Action in August of 2011 was an unprecedented show of force and defiance. But it was just the beginning.
Appalachia Rising Converges on White House in Mass Action, Over 115 Arrested
A mass mobilization calling for the abolition of mountaintop removal coal mining, converged thousands of coalfield residents and supporters in Washington D.C.
Activists Sit Down So EPA Will Stand Up to King Coal
“We’re sitting down inside the EPA to demand the EPA stand up to protect Appalachia’s precious drinking water, historic mountains and public health from the devastation of mountaintop removal,”
Driving Consumer Demand
RAN educates consumers and corporate customers to make socially and environmentally informed purchasing choices that place pressure on companies to improve their business practices.
VIDEO: Mountaintop Removal is an American Tragedy
That’s exactly what actress and RAN ally Susan Sarandon has to say in our new video on mountaintop removal coal mining: It’s way past time for the world’s banks to stop funding the wholesale destruction of Appalachia’s ecosystems.
Hey Banks! If You Finance Coal, They Will Come
Today thousands have taken to the streets in fifty cities around the country to tell the banks that financing the dirtiest form of energy, financing climate change and financing the destruction of Appalachian mountains and communities is not going to be taken lying down.
RAN Protests Coal Export Kingpin Ambre Energy
Ambre has chosen the breathtaking Columbia River as its main artery for the Longview coal port, which would ship millions of tons of coal each year to Asia.
Boardroom Negotiation
RAN works to get companies to the negotiating table and then helps them develop and implement precedent setting policies to protect our environmental and public health.
Royal Bank of Canada Takes Steps Away from Tar Sands With Support for First Nation Rights
RAN has successfully pushed some of the largest banks to stop underwriting loans for tar sands development on the lands of First Nations.
New Mountaintop Removal Report Card: Which Banks Made the Grade
It’s way past time for the world’s banks to stop funding the wholesale destruction of Appalachia’s ecosystems.
Banks Bail on Coal; Top 4 banks Cut Financing for Massey Energy
Two years ago no bank had a policy on coal mining, and Wall Street was providing finance and credit indiscriminately to the most destructive form of mining in the country.
Frontline Community Support
RAN believes that the best way to keep fossil fuels in the ground, protect our climate and challenge corporate power is by standing alongside communities that are most directly impacted by our coal and oil addiction.
Chicago Activists Occupy Local Coal Plant
Activists representing Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) and Rainforest Action Network are demanding that the City of Chicago close both the Crawford plant as well as the nearby Fisk Street plant in Pilsen.
Shareholders Ask PNC Bank to Live the Green Dream
21 year old Amber from the Coal River Valley asks PNC bank’s CEO James Rohr to stop financing the destruction of her community.
Defending Appalachian History
“The corporations take advantage of people in Appalachia, and this is happening all over Appalachia, not just West Virginia… We have to save one mountain at a time.” -Psera Newman, Lexington KY
