Climate Justice actions were held across the nation and Canada Monday, one week ahead of the start of the climate talks in Copenhagen. In San Francisco, twenty-three people were arrested for blocking the entrances to Bank of America. In Chicago, twelve people were arrested during a protest against carbon trading at the Chicago Climate Exchange. In Whitby, Ontario, seven people were arrested for a sit-in at the office of Canada’s Finance Minister. Four people were arrested in Greenville, South Carolina, after activists locked themselves to a 1.5-million-pound generator destined for a coal plant run by Duke Energy. And in New York, a protest was held outside the offices of the Natural Resource Defense Council. Protest organizers targeted the environmental group because of its support of a cap-and-trade system. NASA scientist James Hansen took part in the New York protest.

James Hansen: “The effect that humans are going to have on future climate and the future for our children and grandchildren is analogous to the situation that Lincoln faced with slavery or that Churchill faced with Nazism: it’s not a thing where you can compromise. You have to take the actions that are needed to solve the problem, and that means we’re going to have to phase out coal use, unless the CO2 is captured and sequestered, but that — there is no such thing as clean coal at this time, and there probably never will be.”