Gross. Officials fear the millions of rats that live below New York City in the subway may migrate to the streets and become super rats as they feast on garbage.
US scientists have warned that the Arctic may be close to a tipping point that sees all-year-round ice disappear very rapidly. Data presented in San Francisco suggests the ice is not making a good recovery from the summer melt. Christine McGourty reports.
Five environmental activists with the Rainforest Action Network descended over the edge of the bottom level of the Richmond Bridge and unfurled a 30’x50′ foot banner message directed at Chevron: “Chevron Guilty: Clean Up Amazon.” The protest came two days before Chevron’s Annual Shareholder meeting at its San Ramon, CA headquarters, the first shareholder meeting since the company was found guilty of massive oil contamination in the Ecuadorean Amazon and ordered to pay $18 billion dollars. Take action at http://www.ran.org/standup
DemocracyNow.org – This morning in Durban, South Africa, a group of youth and indigenous activists from Canada gave delegates to the U.N. Climate Change Conference mock gift bags containing samples of fake tar sands along with tourism brochures for Canada and Canadian flags. Kandi Mossett, one of the activists participating in the action, says Canada’s reliance on tar sands oil “is the largest catastrophic project that I am aware of on earth right now.” Mossett, who is the Native Energy and Climate Campaign Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network, notes that the tar sands extraction process is energy and water-intensive, emits immense amounts of pollution into the air, and destroys the landscape. “To even get to the tar sands they have to remove boreal forests — old growth forests — and they call it ‘overburden.’ They just scrape it off and get rid of that. And then they dig down and move so many tons of earth,” Mossett tells Democracy Now!, “Then they squeeze out the last little 10 percent of oil that’s actually in the sand. And then they have to use chemicals to make it liquid enough to be able to put it through the pipelines — it’s much more toxic than any other kind of, you know, sweet crude oil.”
Britain’s leading green commentator, George Monbiot, goes head-to-head with the chief executive of oil giant Shell, tackling ethics, greenwash advertising, renewable energy investments and gas-flaring in Nigeria.
For more information: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfr…
Shell Nigeria is one of the largest oil producers in the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. 80% of the oil extraction in Nigeria is in the Niger Delta, the southeast region of the country. The Delta is home to many small minority ethnic groups, including the Ogoni, all of which suffer egregious exploitation by multinational oil companies, like Shell. Shell provides over 50% of the income keeping the Nigerian dictatorship in power.
Although oil from Ogoniland has provided approximately $30 billion to the economy of Nigeria, the people of Ogoni see little to nothing from their contribution to Shell’s pocketbook. Shell has done next to nothing to help Ogoni. By 1996, Shell employed only 88 Ogoni (0.0002% of the Ogoni population, and only 2% of Shell’s employees in Nigeria). Ogoni villages have no clean water, electricity, abysmal health care, no jobs for displaced farmers and fisher persons and face the effects of unrestrained environmental molestation by Shell everyday.
Since Shell began drilling oil in Ogoniland in 1958, the people of Ogoniland have had pipelines built across their farmlands and in front of their homes, suffered endemic oil leaks from these very pipelines, been forced to live with the constant flaring of gas. This environmental assault has smothered land with oil, killed masses of fish and other aquatic life, and introduced devastating acid rain to the land of the Ogoni. For the Ogoni, a people dependent upon farming and fishing, the poisoning of the land and water has had devastating economic and health consequences. Shell claims to clean up its oil spills, but such “clean-ups” consist of techniques like burning the crude which results in a permanent layer of crusted oil metres thick and scooping oil into holes dug in surrounding earth.
Both Shell and the government admit that Shell contributes to the funding of the military in the Delta region. Under the auspices of “protecting” Shell from peaceful demonstrators in the village of Umeuchem (10 miles from Ogoni), the police killed 80 people, destroyed houses and vital crops. Shell conceded it twice paid the military for going to specific villages. Although it disputes that the purpose of these excursions was to quiet dissent, each of the military missions paid for by Shell resulted in Ogoni fatalities. Shell has also admitted purchasing weapons for the police force who guard its facilities, and there is growing suspicion that Shell funds a much greater portion of the military than previously admitted.
Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8 were leaders of MOSOP, the Movement for Survival of the Ogoni People. As outspoken environmental and human rights activists, they declared that Shell was not welcome in Ogoniland. On November 10, 1995, they were hanged after a trial by a special military tribunal (whose decisions cannot be appealed) in the murder of four other Ogoni activists. The defendants’ lawyers were harassed and denied access to their clients. Although none of them were near the town where the murders occurred, they were convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that many heads of state strongly condemned for a stunning lack of evidence, unmasked partiality towards the prosecution and the haste of the trial. The executions were carried out a mere eight days after the decision. Two witnesses against the MOSOP leaders admitted that Shell and the military bribed them to testify against Ken Saro-Wiwa with promises of money and jobs at Shell. Ken’s final words before his execution were:
“The struggle continues!”
Dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon, Texaco (now Chevron) has been ordered to pay $8 billion to clean up its environmental pollution of reckless oil drilling and restore human rights for the 30,000 affected peoples. Chevron REFUSES to pay the verdict of this 18 year long lawsuit – reflecting the true nature of corporate accountability in the fossil fuel industry.
“Chevron’s strategy in recent years has been, ‘we’ll bleed the plaintiffs dry,’ ” said Robert Percival, director of the environmental law program at the University of Maryland. ” ‘The plaintiffs will run out of money, and we’ll be able to settle really cheaply, or they’ll just go away.’ ” (sfgate.com)
Crude is a must-watch documentary by Joe Berlinger that exposes the true dangers of oil extraction. Everyone should know this information. Please support the filmmakers.
Fossil fuel extraction is common world wide and massively pollutes our fresh water supplies and our environment (see my other videos for the impact of other fossil fuels and more on the world wide water crisis).
Original Trailer at:
*Note* I am not affiliated with the film makers or production company.
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
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