Hands Off Mother Earth!

Civil Society Groups announce new global campaign against
geoengineering tests, urge public to join in.

Cochabamba Bolivia. 21 April 2010 - On the eve of UN Mother Earth Day, over sixty
national and international organizations today threw their weight
behind a common statement launching a global campaign to prevent real
world deployment of geoengineering experiments.

Geoengineering refers to large-scale intentional tinkering with the
climate and earth systems to counteract global warming. The Hands
Off Mother Earth campaign (or H.O.M.E. campaign) regards such
geoengineering schemes as dangerous and unjust. It is urging
individuals and organizations to speak out in opposing them.

With rich governments and industrial interests jockeying for open-air
geoengineering tests it is time to draw a line that should not be
crossed. affirmed Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group, Mexico. Mother Earth
is our common home whose integrity should never be violated by
geoengineering experimentation - it should never be a laboratory for
these risky and unjust schemes.

Ben Powless of the Mohawk Nation (Canada) representing the Indigenous
Environmental Network explained:

"For too long our peoples' bodies and lands have been used to test new
technologies. Now, in response to climate change, these same people
want to put Mother Earth at risk with geoengineering technologies.
We can't afford to threaten our planet in this way, especially when
simple, just and proven solutions are at hand."

Ricardo Navarro, from CESTA, El Salvador speaking on behalf of Friends
of the Earth International, said:

"The same countries and companies that have neglected climate change
for decades, are now proposing very risky geoengineering technologies
that could further disrupt the weather, peoples and ecosystems. For
them geoengineering is a "perfect" excuse to claim they can keep on
heating the planet because later they will cool it off with dangerous
experiments. As global environmental movements, we cannot allow the
geoengineers to experiment with the planet and its peoples."

Launched in Cochabamba Bolivia at the Peoples Conference on Climate
Change and The Rights of Mother Earth, the H.O.M.E campaign features
an interactive website http://www.handsoffmotherearth.org where
individuals can lend a hand to the campaign, leaving messages and
uploading images of themselves. The site features a public portrait
gallery of individuals with open palms calling a halt to
geoengineering. This gallery is expected to swell as the focus of the
campaign moves from Cochabamba this week to upcoming UN talks
culminating in the next meeting of Parties to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun Mexico in December. A
facebook group for the H.O.M.E. campaign has also been launched.

We do not need to test geoengineering because we know that it is a
fundamentally unjust technology asserted Pat Mooney, Executive
Director of ETC Group speaking at the campaign launch. Could you
imagine, in your wildest dreams, that the governments who have spent
decades denying or avoiding climate change; who have failed to meet
even the minimal requirements of the Kyoto Accord; who lack the
courage to tell their societies to change their lifestyles; have
either the integrity or the intellect to manipulate the oceans or the
stratosphere in any way that could be either environmentally-effective
or socially-equitable for the world? Should their hand be on the
global thermostat?