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
As a South Dakota born citizen, Mount Rushmore is a fitting monument to make a declaration that immediate change and action is needed to prevent global climate catastrophe. The point of the action is clear: What monument will we leave for future generations?
I am glad to have started such a robust discussion of global warming. It is good to see that everyone has not drunk the Kool-Aid.
Go somewhere else and hug a whale. Leave Mt. Rushmore alone.
I can envision old Ed Abbey and Hayduke applauding Greenpeace for a job well done. Here I quote: The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, is the duty of the good citizens not to be SILENT.
True Patriotism (1898)
Actually, Frank, last time I looked, I attend the University of Tennessee, an institution that includes five campuses across the state, over 44,000 students, and manages this little thing known as Oak Ridge National Laboratory, home to the National Institute of Computational Sciences, the world's 6th fastest supercomputer, the largest farm-based alternative fuels research program in America, and the world's largest neutronic science research facility - hardly a community college. I could be wrong, though, considering that it's run by the big bad government...
Perhaps you should take a trip down here to the land of the uneducated Southern rubes to enlighten yourself and see what it's like to have your house totally demolished a few days before Christmas by toxic sludge. Better yet, save your money and read any of the 390+ stories written in the Knoxville newspaper about the ash spill.
Again, I'm more than willing to watch my energy bills go up and government play a bigger part in my life if it means the end of coal and all the grief it causes.
I'm glad that there are skeptics questioning the science of global climate change: such challenges only makes the science more robust. No, the problem I have with much of today's environmental skepticism is that it's not a fair fight. Extremely well funded Conservative Think Tanks (CTTs)--who are largely filled with economists, not scientists (although there are exceptions)--are ultimately behind the environmental skepticism movement (see Jacques, P. et al. (2008), "The Organization of Denial: Conservative Think Tanks and Environmental Skepticism," Environmental Politics, 17, 349-385). From the Jacques study, 90% of environmental skeptic books published from 1972 - 2005 are directly affiliated with CTTs. My concern isn't because they are conservative: my concern is because CTTs have no "checks and balances" system like the vetting process academic peer review goes through, and therefore all sorts of misinformation can get published before anyone has a chance to set the record to be more aligned with what climatologists are actually observing (via the peer review process). That's a dangerous amount of power to give a minority of individuals, and the media's "point/counter-point" style hasn't helped public confusion concerning global climate change matters one bit.
Further, it seems like your argument, Frank, is at heart an economic one, not a scientific one, as you state that the free market is a better way to "go about fighting this perceived threat." While I am no fan of increased government, I am neither convinced that free markets are the saviors to mankind. The CTTs' arguments are based largely in economics, in part for fear that free markets would somehow be curtailed by necessitative environmental policy. The goal of CTTs, therefore, is obfuscation: create doubt concerning climate change (i.e., present that scientists are equally divided (they are not), the earth isn't really warming (it is), and we aren't responsible for it (we're 90% likely responsible)) so that the average citizen has no earthly clue what to believe. But if there's doubt, environmental legislation won't happen, and free markets stay intact. So, hooray, we keep our Hummers while we destroy our planet.
Oh, one more item: you assailed Kurt over needing to avoid ad populum arguments. I would caution you to be careful about your own bandwagoning sins, as you seem to be jumping in the environmental skepticism movement (which isn't a majority, thankfully) in spite of weighty, academic evidence to the contrary. Now, while I would hardly assume that you would be swayed by any of this, I would at least encourage you to know what and who is behind the movement you so vociferously support.
Would people believe that I used to work for an organization of global warming skeptics? The stories I could tell about the corruption within that very small outfit ...
As for protests in dangerous places, that's really a decision for those driven by their conscience. And, if it costs the government money, who cares? Certainly, cost and inconvenience has to be part of what makes the tactic worthwhile to do. If people want the tactic to stop, then they have to take the cause seriously and evaluate the merits. What's important ultimately is the substance of the cause, not the tactic - people are way too hung up on tactics.
In Bozeman, over the holiday weekend, we had kind of a farce. A group of libertarians and conservatives staged an independence day anti-tax protest at public expense, closing down Main Street for a couple hours. To my deep chagrin, a group sarcastically calling itself the Gay Loggers for Jesus, protested the way the city handled the permit for the conservative group and organized a protest where they actually raised money in order to pay for the public expense in closing down the street. I think it was an awful precedent; the streets aren't simply for cars ... they are also there for people to raise their voices. The cost of living in a supposedly free society should be on everyone alike. Instead of attacking the merits of the protest, they attacked the process of free public protest. The liberal group here was dead wrong. Likewise, the cost of protest on the monstrosity that's Mt. Rushmore should also be paid by the government. And, those who protest do so at their own risk. I would feel differently if the place of protest actually was worthwhile, but then again, it's not the tactic so much as the substance.
I think the best response to a protest someone thinks is wrong is to organize a counter-protest. And, we as rational people should be able to look at the merits of the claim. That people are bringing up such things as the IPCC and having that discussion tells me that Greenpeace held a very successful protest. Banner drops are often ignored; they scored. Now, the real game is on, at least on this forum and probably many others.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
I finally got to see Mt. Rushmore for the very first time and to think that some people could be so dumb to mess up such a wonderful sight just makes me sick!! Hope every one of them pays a huge fine and does major jail time!!!