E-Waste Hell

SBS Dateline – Sep 25, 2011

How are the west’s ‘recycled’ TVs and computers ending up in a toxic dump in Ghana? Dateline investigates the trade in e-waste which is poisoning a once picturesque part of Africa.

The dark side of electronic waste recycling

Verge Science – Dec 4, 2019

Electronic waste is a hazardous and difficult form of garbage to manage. Though a lot of e-waste can be recycled responsibly, many e-waste processors choose instead to ship it overseas for junkyards in poorer nations to deal with. Remarkably, exporting e-waste is perfectly legal in the US…but thanks to a scrappy nonprofit watchdog, some unscrupulous exporters are still going to jail.

Computer recycling West Africa style – Click – BBC News

BBC News – Feb 20, 2014

Meet the people who make a living from sorting toxic e-waste in Ghana

The legacy of uranium mining on Navajo lands | On Point | nuclear

FILE – This Nov. 13, 1975, file photo, shows signs along the Rio Puerco warning residents in three languages to avoid the water in Church Rock, N.M. after a uranium tailings spill. A group representing Navajo communities is presenting its case to an international human rights body, saying U.S. regulators violated the rights of tribal members when they cleared the way for uranium mining in western New Mexico. (AP Photo/SMH,File)

For more than 40 years, millions of tons of Uranium ore were mined from Navajo lands to make nuclear weapons.

Thousands of workers were exposed to deadly radiation. Those workers are about to lose funding to cover their health costs.

“The money will not fix the health problems of the folks behind us, but just and fair compensation will help begin the healing process,” Navajo Nation president Jonathan Nez says.

Radioactive particles are in the dust, the water, in homes. Workers and their children have unusually high levels of radiation exposure.

But efforts to extend and expand benefits for victims have all failed year after year.

“I had one Navajo elder woman who made the trip to Washington D.C. to testify,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján says. “And she asked Congress one simple question, ‘Are you people waiting for us all to die so the problem goes away?’”

Today, On Point: The toxic legacy of uranium mining on Navajo lands.

Guests

Phil Harrison, senior consultant with the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee. He’s a member of the Navajo Nation and was also an underground uranium miner.

Amber Crotty, Navajo Nation council delegate. (@Kanazbah)

Also Featured

Leslie Begay, a former uranium miner who recently had double lung transplant from radiation exposure.

Sen. Ben Ray Luján, U.S. senator from New Mexico. (@SenatorLujan)

Dr. Kaitlin Kelly-Reif, an epidemiologist at the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

Doug Brugge, professor and chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut.

Transcript: A Former Uranium Miner On The Toxic Legacy Of Radiation Exposure

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Leslie Begay lives in Coyote Canyon, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation. He was 21, had served in Vietnam, when he started working in the uranium mines in 1983.

LESLIE BEGAY: It was just a rain jacket, safety glasses and a hardhat. That’s it. That’s all we had. Nothing else. It wouldn’t even matter. Even if you were wearing a spacesuit, it will still get on you.

…(read more

Related:

• For The Navajo Nation, Uranium Mining’s Deadly Legacy Lingers
• ‘Yellow Dirt’: The Legacy of Navajo Uranium Mines

BBC World Service – The Documentary, Grenada: Confronting the past

Grenada: Confronting the past

The Documentary

BBC World News anchor Laura Trevelyan discovered her family’s slave owning past only after the University College London database of slave ownership in the British Caribbean was published in 2013. Back in the 18th Century, the Trevelyan family were known as absentee slave owners on Grenada. The family never set foot on the island, but owned hundreds of slaves and profited for years from the sale of sugar harvested from five different sugar cane plantations.

To try and learn more about the legacy of slavery on Grenada and her family’s involvement in the slave trade, Laura Trevelyan and her producer Koralie Barrau go to Grenada. Koralie is descended from slaves on the Caribbean island of Haiti, so this was an intense trip for her, personally and professionally. Laura and Koralie visit the plantations, and learn about how slaves were brutalised and tortured. They are guided by the historian and administrator at the University of the West Indies, Dr Nicole Phillip Dowe, and the Grenadian historical novelist DC Campbell.

Grenada’s national commission on reparations for slavery has begun to meet and debate what reparations means. Laura interviews the chair of Grenada’s reparations commission, Arley Gill, to find out about the reparations Grenada is seeking from the former colonial powers of France and Britain.

Finally, Laura tries to find the ancestors of slaves once owned by her family – a journey which takes her to the heart of Grenada’s capital St George’s.

Presenter: Laura Trevelyan
Producer: Koralie Barrau

(Photo: Hands holding iron shackles. Credit: Mixel Inc)

ANTARCTICA – THE LOOMING THREAT

May 5 2022

We used to consider #Antarctica as a stable place, but recent heat waves, with temperatures up to 70 degrees centigrade above normal, combined with atmospheric rivers, which increase both warmth and moisture, are threatening the stability of the continent, and challenging climate models. Because of these phenomena, global sea level rise will likely be far higher than any of the models have so far predicted.

#PaulBeckwith explains to host Dale Walkonen that, as ice shelves, like Larsen A, B, and now C melt and fall into the ocean, they cease to hold back the ice sheets that lie on top of the land mass. If these sheets collapse as well, many coastal cities, unable to hold back the ocean, will be inundated with sea water. This loss of life and land can only be mitigated if #ClimateChange is seriously addressed within this decade.

For more information on the state of our planet visit FacingFuture.Earth/library

Sir David Attenborough and President Obama: The Full Interview

The Obama White House – Jul 10, 2015

President Obama and Naturalist Sir David Attenborough sit to discuss and contemplate the natural world at the White House.

‘People are listening’, Greta meets Sir David – BBC

BBC – Apr 12, 2021

Watch the BBC first on iPlayer https://bbc.in/iPlayer-Home Moving moment Greta Thunberg and Sir David Attenborough met for the first time.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg takes a year off school to explore the science of global warming and challenge world leaders, calling for action on climate change.

Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World | BBC

The Queen laughs with Sir David Attenborough about a sundial

The Royal Family Channel – Apr 10, 2018

The Queen laughs with Sir David Attenborough about a sundial that has been planted in the shade in a new documentary. Report by Sarah Duffy.

The Queen’s Green Planet | Family Trees | ITV

ITV – Apr 17, 2018

Featuring a unique conversation between The Queen and Sir David Attenborough as they walked in the garden at Buckingham Palace last summer, a new landmark documentary from ITV will explore the ambition of a remarkable new initiative – a vast network of native forests across Britain and the Commonwealth, protected forever in The Queen’s name.

The documentary from ITN Productions follows the progress of The Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy, the conservation project aimed at raising awareness of the value of indigenous forests, and of preserving them for future generations.

At the centre of this landmark documentary is the conversation between Her Majesty The Queen and Sir David Attenborough in which they discuss trees, nature and conservation and the ambition of The Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy.