Mobilization for Climate Justice

Cross-posted from Alternet

Bo Webb Photo Credit: Appalachia Rising

Living underneath a mountaintop removal mining operation in the Coal River Valley in West Virginia, Bo Webb has emerged as one of the most important frontline voices in the coalfield justice movement. Winner of the Purpose Prize last year, this coal miner’s son has met with and lobbied EPA and OSMRE officials and members of Congress, made personal appeals to President Obama, co-founded the Mountain Justice movement with Judy Bonds and many others, worked with the Coal River Mountain Watch organization, and organized and led numerous protests, marches and health care campaigns in West Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Jeff Biggers: Thanks to years of advocacy and actions by a growing movement, the EPA issued strict guidance rules on mountaintop removal operations last year, which EPA administrator Lisa Jackson acknowledged would end most valley fill operations. Do you think the EPA gone as far as it possibly (and politically) can in “regulating” mountaintop removal or should the EPA still be the focused of lobbying pressure?

Bo Webb: Absolutely not. The EPA can simply enforce the Clean Water Act and end mountaintop removal (MTR) now. They have not addressed, tested, or studied the air quality issue of people beneath these MTR sites being forced to breathe toxic blasting fallout of diesel fuel, ammonium nitrate, silica from blasted sandstone rock nor fungal bacteria that may be uncovered with blasting. In the interest of public health the EPA should immediately place a moratorium on all MTR operations until they can conduct a health study of the long-term effects of MTR on the people in communities beneath these sacrifice zones.

JB: Do you think mountaintop removal mining needs to be framed as only an environmental issue — and thus, attracting more support from mainstream environmental organizations in D.C. and beyond — or as a human rights and health care issue?

BW: It has all too often been framed as an environmental issue and in a sense it is, but far greater than it being an environmental issue it is a human rights issue. I spent my day yesterday in the once town of Lindytown and Twilight, WV. Any reasonable thinking person that should visit this place would conclude that they have witnessed the resulting act of ethnic cleansing.

JB: After years of lobbying and leading protests in Charleston, W.V., and Washington, D.C., where do you think the anti-mountaintop removal movement should focus its funds and energy in the next phase — and more importantly, where should foundations and major fundraising efforts be dedicated?

BW: I believe we have accomplished about all we are going to accomplish in WV and Eastern Kentucky. It is time to move pressure on Washington, D.C., to the likes and persistence they have not seen since the Viet Nam War era. We have organized in these two Appalachian states for 40 years. It is now time to stop organizing and start mobilizing. Mobilizing will in itself work to organize.

JB: Appalachia Rising — an alliance of various groups and advocates — brought over 1,000 anti-mountaintop removal protesters to march in Washington, D.C., last summer, where over 100 people were arrested in front of the White House. That was 9 months ago. What has happened since, and should Appalachia Rising just be an annual event to call attention to the mountaintop removal or should it be organizing more sustained and frequent actions?

BW: Actually that number was much greater than 1,000. There were at least 3,000 people in the march itself and upwards of 1,000 that attended the weekend workshops. We brought an awful lot of people together that came to the frame of mind that they are ready to step up to the next level of mobilization protests as opposed to lobbying congress and the EPA to stop the MTR killing machine. I am very disappointed that we are not taking full advantage of this fact with another planned DC event. I hope that soon we will do that by offering evidence of the ever increasing cancer rates in the MTR sacrifice zones.

JB: The anti-mountaintop removal movement has become a national movement, involving mainstream citizens and environmental organizations based in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco and across Appalachia, direct action groups and affected coalfield residents. A similar national movement to end poverty in Appalachia — and to end strip-mining — took place in the 1960s, and the question was often ask: Who speaks for Appalachia? How role should affected residents in coal mining communities play in the national anti-MTR movement?

BW: Obviously we need help, national help. But the voices of the affected people and their immediate urgency of relief from the health effects of MTR must be heard above that of other concerns including jobs and labor, and unions I might add. Often forgotten aside from the physical health issues of MTR are the mental stress health effects of people living beneath this bombing of our mountains. I know first hand the mental effects of shell shock. I witnessed it and experienced it in Viet Nam. It is evident to me that people living beneath and near this terror are experiencing much the same.

JB: The first bill to end strip-mining was introduced in 1940 by Sen. Everett Dirksen — 70 years ago. US. Rep. Ken Hechler, from WV, introduced a bill to abolish strip-mining in 1970, and held the first hearings on mountaintop removal in 1971. Do you think it is important to maintain a citizens lobby force to push Congress, especially this current Republican-held House, to change course and abolish MTR?

BW: Yes, I do. But with that, there needs to be a much larger effort by nonprofits, grassroots, and big greens to mobilize their membership. It is time to get out of their seats and into the streets, and a few into the halls of congress to preach about what is happening outside their walls.

JB: Direct action — nonviolent protests and civil disobedience — have been a driving force in the anti-strip-mining movement since the 1960s, and saw renewed interest from campaigns led by Mountain Justice and Climate Ground Zero in West Virginia in the last few years. What role should direct action — either periodical actions or a sustained campaign — play in the future?

BW: It should be constant with a persistent message willing to challenge the status quo. No one that is aware of MTR should ever get a free pass so to speak, no fence sitting for any political group, Christian group or union group. We are all to be held responsible for every death that occurs from the day forth that we become aware of MTR. If we think we are doing all we can, we are wrong, we can do more. As caring human beings we understand that if we are involved in an activity that is causing harm and death to another human being, but we are not aware, then that is forgivable. But when we are given the knowledge of the truth that our activity is harming other human beings we must immediately stop that activity, otherwise we venture into an area of underlying evil. There is a bible passage that addresses this issue. I just happen to have Judy Bonds’ Bible in front of me right now and I quote Hebrew’s 10:26. “For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.”

JB: Strip-mining takes place in 24 states, including new proposals in the endangered Cook Inlet in Alaska, the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, and wilderness areas near Bryce National Park in Utah. As you know, Sec. of Interior Ken Salazar just green-lighted strip-mining operations in Wyoming that will produce 750 million to 2 billion tons of coal — several times the annual production of all Appalachia. Why should a national anti-mountaintop removal movement only lobby to halt mountaintop removal in 4 central Appalachian states, and not other affected regions?

BW: We need to end all surface mining as soon as we possibly can. We are selling and shipping great amounts of coal overseas, perhaps more than we actually use domestically. Yet, certain politicians and the coal industry rail about the need to mine more coal in the name of energy independence. That is pure BS, and anti-American. To wrap oneself in the flag in that manner in an attempt to deflect the admission of greed is shameful. So, I say all surface mining should be halted as soon as possible, but I believe that MTR surface mining is much more than a coal issue. Again, it is a human rights issue, people are suffering and dying because of it. America’s majestic Appalachian Mountains are being transformed from miraculous incubators of life into tombs of death for all living creatures in the valleys and hollows below. Ending MTR will be a great victory for all of mankind now and our future generations. It is doable, and a great leap toward truly addressing climate change. More than one million acres of God’s carbon capturing forest have been destroyed by MTR. Let’s end MTR first, thereby energizing the movement to move forward and stop this insane path of destruction we are on.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

30^th March 2011 – Plans were approved on 14 March 2011 to convert RWE npower’s Tilbury B power station from coal to burning imported wood pellets – over 7 million tonnes per year. Biofuelwatch estimates that this would, if implemented, push the UK’s planned demand for biomass to around 60 million tonnes of wood per year (1).  This is more than six times the UK’s annual wood production (2) and poses a major threat to forests, local as well as forest-dependent communities and to the climate.  RWE claim that most of the wood will be sourced from North America, but they have permission to source it from anywhere.

RWE expects to have the Tilbury power station running on wood by the end of the year. This will nearly double the amount of wood pellets burned in the entire EU – 9 million tones in 2010.  RWE will receive around £400m in ‘renewable energy’ financial subsidies a year for this power station alone (3).

Click here to read the full press release.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

30^th March 2011 – Plans were approved on 14 March 2011 to convert RWE npower’s Tilbury B power station from coal to burning imported wood pellets – over 7 million tonnes per year. Biofuelwatch estimates that this would, if implemented, push the UK’s planned demand for biomass to around 60 million tonnes of wood per year (1).  This is more than six times the UK’s annual wood production (2) and poses a major threat to forests, local as well as forest-dependent communities and to the climate.  RWE claim that most of the wood will be sourced from North America, but they have permission to source it from anywhere.

RWE expects to have the Tilbury power station running on wood by the end of the year. This will nearly double the amount of wood pellets burned in the entire EU – 9 million tones in 2010.  RWE will receive around £400m in ‘renewable energy’ financial subsidies a year for this power station alone (3).

Click here to read the full press release.

30^th March 2011 – Plans were approved on 14 March 2011 to convert RWE npower’s Tilbury B power station from coal to burning imported wood pellets – over 7 million tonnes per year. Biofuelwatch estimates that this would, if implemented, push the UK’s planned demand for biomass to around 60 million tonnes of wood per year (1).  This is more than six times the UK’s annual wood production (2) and poses a major threat to forests, local as well as forest-dependent communities and to the climate.  RWE claim that most of the wood will be sourced from North America, but they have permission to source it from anywhere.

RWE expects to have the Tilbury power station running on wood by the end of the year. This will nearly double the amount of wood pellets burned in the entire EU – 9 million tones in 2010.  RWE will receive around £400m in ‘renewable energy’ financial subsidies a year for this power station alone (3).

Click here to read the full press release.

An investigative report. [Part I: http://bit.ly/fV8slf | Part II: http://bit.ly/gMITca | Part III: http://bit.ly/gMrxw9 | Part IV: http://bit.ly/eVOWDf]

Published on Political Context March 26^th, 2011.

By Cory Morningstar

This is the fourth and final instalment of an investigative report uncovering and analyzing a global plan to capture and utilize the ocean’s store of methane hydrates. The investigation reflects upon the decades of planning coordinated by the world’s most powerful institutions, including the global banking and investment corporations, global fossil fuel energy corporations, United Nations, the OECD, the United States (US) Department of Defense, US Department of Energy, the administrations of each of the leading greenhouse gas-emitting states, and powerful NGOs. The report details why and how the coordinated planning evolved while keeping the public-at-large in the dark. Finally, the report explains why methane must be considered the most lethal contributor to climate change, according to the most recent and relevant science.

Destination – Hell. Are we there yet?

Drilling and Earthquakes

16 June 2004: Overwhelmed: Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cries as he leaves after a press conference in Fukushima. 19 March 2010.

16 June 2004: US Department of Energy meeting summary: “Alternatively, an undersea earthquake today, say off the Blake Ridge or the coast of Japan or California might loosen and cause some of the sediment to slide down the ridge or slump, exposing the hydrate layer to the warmer water. That in turn could cause a chain reaction of events, leading to the release of massive quantities of methane. Another possibility is drilling and other activities related to exploration and recovery of methane hydrates as an energy resource. The hydrates tend to occur in the pores of sediment and help to bind it together. Attempting to remove the hydrates may cause the sediment to collapse and release the hydrates. So, it may not take thousands of years to warm the ocean and the sediments enough to cause massive releases, only lots of drilling rigs. Returning to the 4 GtC release scenario, assume such a release occurs over a one-year period sometime in the next 50 years as result of slope failure. According to the Report of the Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee, “Catastrophic slope failure appears to be necessary to release a sufficiently large quantity of methane rapidly enough to be transported to the atmosphere without significant oxidation or dissolution.” In this event, methane will enter the atmosphere as methane gas. It will have a residence time of several decades and a global warming potential of 62 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. This would be the equivalent of 248 GtC as carbon dioxide or 31 times the annual man-made GHG emissions of today. Put another way, this would have the impact of nearly 30 years worth of GHG warming all at once. The result would almost certainly be a rapid rise in the average air temperature, perhaps as much as 3°F immediately. This might be tolerable if that’s as far as things go. But, just like 15,000 years ago, if the feedback mechanisms kick in, we can expect rapid melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice and an overall temperature increase of 30°F.”

Since writing the first 3 instalments of this investigative series, the race to drill methane hydrates has begun in Japan. New Zealand, in a joint venture with Germany, is the next in line to commence.

1 February 2011: “Seabed drilling exploration for methane hydrate in coastal waters, utilizing a world-class deep sea exploration vessel, is scheduled to start Saturday. In the planned exploration, the Chikyu is expected to drill 100 meters to 400 meters into the seabed, which lies at a depth of 700 meters to 1,000 meters. The geological structure of layers surrounding the hydrate, and the degree of stability regarding drill holes and pipes, are among the subjects to be surveyed. The Chikyu uses state-of-the-art equipment able to drill as deep as 7,000 meters under the seabed.”

On 11 March 2011, the world witnessed one of the most powerful earthquakes since 1900, devastating the country of Japan. It has resulted in a nuclear catastrophe still unfolding. Lethal tsunamis followed the earthquake, and were not limited to Japan. A wildlife sanctuary situated on a tiny atoll near Hawaii lay victim to one such resulting tsunami, wiping out thousands of endangered seabirds and other animals. Exposure to radiation continues to threaten citizens as far away as California.

The video below features Dr Helen Caldicott speaking in Montreal, Canada: UN lies about nuclear threat. Caldicott has been named one of the most influential women of the 20th Century by the Smithsonian Institute. (Filmed on 18 March 2011: 5:06)

On 3 September 2010 and 22 February 2011, the world witnessed two deadly earthquakes in Christchurch, Aotearoa (New Zealand).

What is not widely known, is the fact that Japan announced it would commence drilling methane hydrates on 1 February 2011. Also not widely known, is the fact that on 1 June 2010, the corporate giant  Petrobras was awarded an exploration permit to drill for oil and gas in the Raukumara Basin of earthquake prone Aotearoa. The Raukumara Basin sits on a major and active fault line. In the last 30 years, there have been 108 earthquakes exceeding the 5 magnitude scale in this basin, and since 1989, this basin has experienced 6 earthquakes exceeding the 6 magnitude scale. Aotearoa, has been identified by conservative think-tank Fraser Institute as the second most attractive country to invest in for petroleum exploration. To describe Aotearoa as ‘the new fossil fuel frontier’ is beyond reckless as the entire country of Aotearoa is situated on a major fault line. Offshore exploration in Aotearoa has become extensive, with projects planned from the tip of the North Island down to the bottom of the South Island. One must consider that the recent seismic exploration for oil, gas and mining may have contributed to the vast number of earthquakes. The invasive techniques undertaken in such exploration include mass construction, drilling, dynamite, reflection seismology, inducement of seismic waves and ‘artificial earthquakes’. One must also consider that the invasive exploration techniques within the Aotearoa Canterbury Plains, and the offshore Canterbury Basin have contributed to the ‘newly discovered fault‘ which scientists believe to have caused the devastating earthquakes. After the September quake, geologists at GNS Science began examining drill-hole data held by Ecan and on-land seismic recordings made by oil and gas exploration companies. The Petrobras permit grants access to 12,330 square kilometres within Raukumara Basin, extending from 4 kilometres off the Aotearoa coast to 110 kilometres from the coast. The Raukumara Basin, a high seismic activity area, covers 25,000 square kilometres, extending about 300 kilometres north and around 100 kilometres wide off East Cape in the North Island. (20 August 2010: Govt’s petroleum permit ignored environment) Petrobras claims they are about to begin seismic data collection of the Raukumara Basin. What is most interesting, is the fact that the June 2010 permit (Crown Minerals), gave Petrobras permission to drill, almost immediately. From the legal document: “Within 60 months of the commencement of the permit, the permittee SHALL drill one exploratory well.” Councillor Manu Caddie, has made the public aware that there is no legal requirement for Petrobras to apply for a further permit before commencing drilling. It is critical to bear in mind that the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico BP disaster was the result of an exploratory well. As of 1 December 2009, Petrobras had a market capitalisation of US$221 billion. The power and influence of Petrobras runs deep having funded and partnered with 120 universities. (See part III – Universities as Bedfellows | Moral Nihilism)

The scientific community has long suspected that sonar and seismic technology (from survey vessels) creates suffering and anguish for whales and marine life. As fossil fuel corporations in Aotearoa have expanded their invasive techniques of exploration, for further oil and gas production, the frequency of stranded whales upon beaches has dramatically increased: 22 August 2010, 73 pilot whales washed up on Kaitaia beach, Aotearoa – 58 dead; 23 September 2010, 80 pilot whales stranded at Spirits Bay, Aotearoa. 40 dead; 21 January 2011, 24 pilot whales died after becoming stranded on the North Island of Aotearoa;7 February 2011, 82 pilot whales stranded in Golden Bay area, for the 3^rd time in 3 days. 17 dead. 20 February 2011, forty-eight hours prior to the Christchurch earthquake, more than 107 pilot whales washed up on Aotearoa’s South Island. All died. On 4 March, 7 days prior to the catastrophic earthquake in Japan, 50 melon-headed whales washed up on the eastern shore of Kashima.

Although mass beaching of whales have been common to Aotearoa in the past, the drastic increase in these tragic events, coupled with the proximity of the earthquakes themselves, in both Aotearoa and Japan, raises many questions. The tectonic plate shifts that occur prior to earthquakes is often cited as a possible cause of such mass beachings. Yet, one must consider the distinct possibility that such tragic events  are, more often than not, caused by human interference. In 2009, scientists reported that seismic surveys used for oil and gas prospecting are a disturbance for blue whales, the world’s biggest animal and one of its rarest species. Seismic testing employed by the survey vessels has been linked to past events. In June 2003, 100 whales became trapped in a bay in the north of Madagascar, near an area where ExxonMobil was carrying out a seismic survey. Despite denying any responsibility, under intense media scrutiny, Exxon halted its surveying programme. In a world addicted to lethal fossil fuels, such occurrences have become common. The East Cape area in Aotearoa is as a key marine mammal migration area from autumn through to spring, which is the period in which Petrobras will be using underwater sonic shock waves to explore potential oil exploitation of and gas deposits in the area.

On 24 January 2011, a group of international and New Zealand scientists drilled directly into South Island’s Alpine Fault – a massive fault line to investigate its structure, mechanics and evolution.

Vast quantities of methane hydrates collect along geological fault lines. Japan sits atop a nexus of three of the world’s largest.

On 24 February 2011, 15 days prior to Japan’s devastating earthquake, Dr Elisabetta Mariani, in an interview with BBC was asked if drilling holes in the major ‘alpine’ fault running through new Zealand was a good idea. She answered: “As scientists [we can say] … there is another important drilling going on … off shore the east coast of Japan …  and is going well and is successful and has not caused problems which the locals were concerned about so this is what we told [the New Zealanders] and what we tell you as well.”

On 7 March 2011, in response to the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission, two US gas drilling companies agreed to suspend specific operations at wells near Arkansas after their work was linked to nearby earthquakes. Both Chesapeake Energy, based in Oklahoma, and Clarita Operating of Little Rock, informed the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission that they have halted operation of the wells near Greenbrier and Guy. 800 earthquakes have hit the area in the past six months. One was a 4.7 quake – the strongest in Arkansas in 35 years.

Is it possible, that the massive earthquakes which devastated Japan and New Zealand, can be connected to invasive deep drilling? Is it possible that the scale of seismic testing, coupled with invasive drilling and exploration techniques, provoked these massive earthquakes? Is it possible that humans failed to recognize and understand the dire warnings of what was to unfold, through witnessing the tragic deaths of the ocean’s sensitive whales?

As the late Carl Sagan, NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal recipient, has eloquently stated: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It appears that the recent drilling into the Nankai Trough fault line is not to blame in the case of Japan, as the fault line which ruptured is said to be different than that of the Tokai area, where the Nankai Trough fault line exists. However, the impact from the methane hydrate drilling, if it did proceed on 5 February 2011, as planned, is unknown. Methane hydrates, deposited on the seafloor, are present all along the Pacific coast from Kyushu to the Tokai district.

The suggestion that human activity can cause seismic activity is widely accepted in the scientific community. A paper in the journal Oilfield Review published in 2000, noted that the connection between oil production and earthquakes dates back to at least the 1920s, when geologists in South Texas noted faulting near an oil field.

In May of 2010, The Royal Society releases 12 research papers in the theme issue titled ‘Climate forcing of geological and geomorphological hazards’. Top scientists call for research on climate in connection to earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and gas-hydrate destabilisation observing that the “ongoing rise in global average temperatures may already be eliciting a hazardous response from the geosphere.” From the editors introduction: “The sensitivity to climate change of gas hydrates, in both marine and continental settings, has long captured interest, in relation to its potential role in past episodes of rapid warming, such as in the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), and in the context of anthropogenic warming. In the first of a pair of papers on the subject, Maslin et al. review the current state of the science as it relates to gas hydrates as a potential hazard. The authors note that gas hydrates may present a serious threat as the world warms, primarily through the release of large quantities of methane into the atmosphere, thus forcing accelerated warming, but also as a consequence of their possible role in promoting submarine slope failure and consequent tsunami generation.”

The Nankai Trough subduction zone, located southwest of Japan, is one of the most active earthquake zones on Earth. This is a region notorious for generating devastating earthquakes and tsunamis with complex geological formations caused by tectonic plate thrusts. On 31 August 2010 scientists returned from the first ever riser drilling operations in Seismogenic Zone, an operation named Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE). The NanTroSEIZE expedition 332 completed expedition on 11 December 2010. Stage 1 (2007-2008) of the operation included discovery of methane hydrates. A third-party representative of the venture is Halliburton.

There are numerous methane-hydrate deposits within the oceans surrounding Japan, shown in red on the map to the far left. They are found in the Nankai Trough, on the Chyoshi Spur, the eastern portion of the Japan Sea, and the southern Okhotsk Sea. The GSJ has calculated that these deposits combined, would yield 6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas (over a hundred times the amount consumed per year in Japan). (Source: Geological Survey of Japan) Image on right represents global methane hydrates.

The overview of the first offshore production test of methane hydrate in the Nankai Trough undertaken by Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) can be read here. The final selection on the test location will be made by the end of March 2011.

The Japanese citizens have been inundated with untold pain and suffering. It is unconscionable to expect the Japanese people to further risk themselves and their children, for corporate wealth, yet, that is exactly what the Japanese government, with support from the Canadian Government and other major greenhouse-gas emitting states are expecting:

• 26 December 2007, Bloomberg, Japan Mines ‘Flammable Ice,’ Flirts With Environmental Disaster: ”Fifty-five million years ago the world’s climate was catastrophically changed when volcanoes melted natural gas frozen in the seabed. Now Japan plans to drill for the same icy crystals to end its reliance on imported energy … A mass release of methane into the sea and the atmosphere is a risk for global warming … Massive landslides at the ocean floor must be avoided when drilling at the Nankai Trough.”

• 27 September 2010, The Guardian, Japan to drill for controversial ‘fire ice’: “Concerns had been raised that digging for frozen methane would destabilise the methane beds, which contain enough gas worldwide to snuff out most complex life on earth … Jogmec acknowledges the problems, admitting mining of methane ice could lead to landslides and the devastation of marine life in the mining areas.”

• 3 October 2010, autobloggreen, Japan’s trade ministry seeks $1b investment to drill for controversial methane hydrates: “There’s a big risk involved, too. If the drilling is unsuccessful, some experts predict the attempt could destabilize the methane beds and trigger an environmental disaster of epic proportions. So, good luck!”

• 15-17 November 2010, International Symposium on Methane Hydrates Resources from Mallik to Nankai Trough: “The primary goal of the symposium will be to provide an overview of recent research achievements by Japan to characterize methane hydrate in the Nankai Trough area, and by Canada and Japan to quantify the production response of permafrost gas hydrate in the Mackenzie Delta.”

In 2010, the Geological Society of America publishes a report: Massive methane release triggered by seafloor erosion offshore southwestern Japan. Their analysis is strikingly similar to the Storegga Slide, an event that resulted in a tsunami as high as 25 metres, as described in part II of this investigative report: ”We hypothesize that erosion of the seafloor via bottom-water currents unroofed buoyant hydrate-laden sediments and subhydrate overpressured free gas zones beneath the anticline. Once triggered, gas-driven erosion created a positive feedback mechanism, releasing gas and eroding hydrate-bearing sediment. We suggest that erosive currents in deep-water methane hydrate provinces act as hair triggers, destabilizing kilometer-scale swaths of the seafloor where large concentrations of underlying overpressured methane exist. Our analysis suggests that kilometer-scale degassing events are widespread, and that deep-water hydrate reservoirs can rapidly release methane in massive quantities.”

Kalev Leetaru, Senior Research Scientist for Content Analysis at the Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Science at the University of Illinois Coordinator of Information Technology and Coordinator of Information Technology and Research at the University of Illinois Cline Center for Democracy, is unequivocal in his paper titled Methane Hydrate: An Apocalyptic Panacea: ”In our never-ending search to quench our thirst for energy-producing resources, we could end up destroying our planet. This remote, but very real possibility is made all the more real by the global impact of methane, both in the explosive bursts it often triggers on its release, and as a greenhouse gas once it has been released into the atmosphere.”

On a side-note, scientists are planning to drill all the way through the planet’s miles-thick crust to Earth’s deep, hot mantle in order to retrieve samples for the first time by 2020.

Will we drill ourselves to death? It appears so. The tragedy is this – solar and wind have never been known to cause meltdowns, tsunamis, landslides, cancers or sickness. Yet we all know that a society which is self-sufficient is the greatest threat to the fossil fuel economy and current power structures that exist today. This system has been and will continue to be, protected at all costs. Human life is expendable whereas corporate profits, economic growth and quarterly gains have all become absolutely sacrosanct. Read the rest of this entry »

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Clash of Cultures. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

In 1972, at the height of the Vietnam War and the youth counter-culture, the gap between the generations and cultures seemed insurmountable.

This photograph was shot on assignment for the St. Louis Outlaw during the anti-war protests of the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach.  It was Orin Langelle’s first photo assignment.

Langelle, now the Co-director and Strategist for Global Justice Ecology Project, is working on a book documenting four decades of his concerned photography.  He comments, “Times change but yet the U.S. is always in some war somewhere, while still being deeply divided by race, class and politics. The madness continues while Mother Earth and all inhabitants suffer from those who profit from her exploitation and plunder.

This first assignment helped make me the photographer that I am today.  It was a difficult assignment for me back in ’72 but included sharing a smoke (ahem, not tobacco) with Yippie! co-founder Abbie Hoffman.  My photos ranged from images of John Wayne on the inside of the convention center to ‘Hanoi Jane’ Fonda on the outside.”

See more from Langelle’s photo essay of the 1972 Republican National Convention by clicking here.

This and other of Langelle’s photos from the 1972 RNC are housed in the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan.

Also check out the GJEP Photo Gallery and past Photos of the Month.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Video by Monkeybizniz

Detective Pig investigates soy production in South America and finds out the truth behind a new label for ‘responsible’ soy. This label will be launched on the European market this spring by the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS), a voluntary certification scheme supported by agribusiness including Monsanto and Unilever, and a few NGOs including WWF. This new animation video leads watchers to a petition that asks retailers and other soy users to not mislead consumers by this ‘responsible’ label, but rather move to real solutions which would lead to a shift away from soy imports and factory farming. Already over 15.000 people have sent this message to amongst others Carrefour, Unilever and Tesco. The animation is available in English, French, Dutch, Spanish, German and Danish.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from Alternet

By Ellen LaConte

Photo Credit: di the huntress

Spring has sprung — at least south of the northern tier of states where snow still has a ban on it — and the grass has ‘riz. And so has the price of most foods, which is particularly devastating just now when so many Americans are unemployed, underemployed, retired or retiring, on declining or fixed incomes and are having to choose between paying their mortgages, credit card bills, car payments, and medical and utility bills and eating enough and healthily. Many are eating more fast food, prepared foods, junk food — all of which are also becoming more expensive — or less food.

In some American towns, and not just impoverished backwaters, as many as 30 percent of residents can’t afford to feed themselves and their families sufficiently, let alone nutritiously. Here in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina where I live it’s 25 percent. Across the country one out of six of the elderly suffers from malnutrition and hunger. And the number of children served one or two of their heartiest, healthiest meals by their schools grows annually as the number of them living at poverty levels tops 20 percent. Thirty-seven million Americans rely on food banks that now routinely sport half-empty shelves and report near-empty bank accounts. And this is a prosperous nation!

In some cases this round of price hikes on everything from cereal and steak to fresh veggies and bread — and even the flour that can usually be bought cheaply to make it — will be temporary. But over the long term the systems that have provided most Americans with a diversity, quantity and quality of foods envied by the rest of the world are not going to be as reliable as they were.

What’s for Supper Down the Road?

As they move through the next few decades Americans can expect:

• The price of conventionally produced food to rise and not come down again;
• Prices to rollercoaster so that budgeting is unpredictable;
• Some foods to become very expensive compared to what we’re used to;
• And other foods, beginning with some of the multiple versions of the same thing made by the same company to garner a bigger market share and more shelf space, to gradually become unavailable.

Tremors in food supply chains and pricing will make gardening look like a lot more than a hobby, a seasonal workout, a practical way to fill your pantry with your summer favorites, or a physically, spiritually and mentally healing activity, or all four. Gardening and small-scale and collective farming, especially of staple crops and the ones that could stave off malnutrition, could become as important as bringing home the bacon, both the piggy and the dollar kind. Why?

Why Is Gardening So Important Now?

There are at least five reasons why more of us should take up spade, rake and hoe, make compost and raise good soil and garden beds with a vengeance, starting this spring and with an eye toward forever.

1) Peak oil. Most petroleum experts agree that we shot past peak oil in the U.S. around 1971. Lest you’ve missed the raging, that’s the point at which more than half the readily, affordably retrievable oil in reserves has been used up, what remains is more expensive to retrieve, and the dregs are irretrievable. We’ve shot or are about to shoot past peak worldwide, estimates of when ranging from 2007 to 2013, with many oil company execs agreeing to at least the latter. There are no new cheap-easy oil fields coming on line. Any new fields you hear about or new methods, like tar sands drilling are expensive, water guzzling, dangerous, environmentally disastrous and unlikely to produce more than a few years worth of oil, and that a decade or more down the line. That means abundant, cheap oil is about to be history. What difference does that make?

For one thing, there is no replacement for oil that can do all that oil has done as cheaply and universally as oil has done it. I offer an exercise in Life Rules, “The ABC’s of Peak Oil” which helps readers imaginatively subtract from their lives everything that depends in one way or another on cheap easy oil. It doesn’t leave much. (See Beth Terry’s Web site, for example, for what subtracting plastics may entail.)

The global economy that presently supplies us with our food, runs on cheap oil and lots of it. It runs slower and less predictably on expensive oil that’s hard to get because it’s located in hard-to-reach or high-risk conflict-ridden zones. Cheap, abundant food on the shelves of grocery and big box stores and food banks, on our tables and in our bellies depends on cheap abundant oil for fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and to power farm machinery and transport food from fields to processors and packagers and then to purveyors and consumers, around the world. Past peak, that system’s going to have the half-life of the strontium 90 that’s escaping the Fukushimi Dai-ichi reactor: 29 years, or thereabouts. One good global crisis, and not that long.

2) Peak soil space. A couple of links between peak oil and peak soil: First, it matters that one of the proposed alternatives to oil is biofuels. Acreage around the world is being converted from production of corn, wheat and soy for human and animal consumption — i.e. food — to production of ethanol and biofuels to put in trucks and cars and … which makes remaining corn, et al., more expensive. Some energy economy geniuses are proposing that Afghans, for example, convert the fields of opium poppies that are their primary agricultural export, not to growing grains or legumes or other staple foods, but to biofuel, which would, not coincidentally, make the gasoline that goes in American military equipment much cheaper and provide Afghans with a profitable market item rather than food.

According to a 2009 National Geographic staff report, “The corn used to make a 25-gallon tank of ethanol would feed one person for a year.” Tell that to Archer-Daniels-Midland, Al Gore’s deep-pockets friend and mega-ethanol and corn products producer. Second, the huge oil-gluttonous machinery that has made factory farming possible has compacted soils, literally crushing the life out of them.

Arable land in the developing or so-called Third World has been at a premium since time immemorial, thanks to geographic location and/or persistent plundering by empires old and new. Revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East are occurring not just to obtain more democratic governments but also to obtain more food and more affordable food. Revolutionaries are barking up a tree that’s seen better days.

In the United States and elsewhere in the developed, read “First” world, arable land has reached peak production. All those petroleum-based products that fueled the Green Revolution of the last century, also produce so many crops, constantly, with support from toxic chemicals and without concern for the microbes that make soil a live, self-regenerating system, that most American farmland — if its farmers didn’t go organic a while back — is comprised of dead soils. Peak oil makes a repeat of the petroleum-driven 20th century Green Revolution impossible, which is good for soil and other living things, not so much for food prices and supplies.

After peak, in soil like in oil, comes descent. Adding insult to injury, every year farmers lose thousands of acres of arable land to urban and suburban sprawl and more tons of topsoil than they produce of grain and other field crops to attrition. Half the Earth’s original trove of topsoil, like that which once permitted the American Midwest to feed the world, has been lost to wind and erosion. Millions of years in the making, it has been depleted and degraded by industrialized agriculture in only a couple of centuries. China’s soils ride easterly winds across the Pacific to settle out on cars and rooftops in California while the American Bread Basket’s soils are building deltas and dead zones at the mouth of the Mississippi. Like oil, that soil isn’t coming back. We can only build it, help it to build itself and wait.

3) Monoculture. We can cut to the chase on this one. The food we eat is produced on industrial-strength, fossil-fuel-driven super farms. Those farms practice monoculture: the planting one crop, often of one genetic strain of that crop, at a time and sometimes year after year over vast landscapes of plowed field. When thousands of acres of farmland are sown with the same genetic strain of grain, uncongenial bout of weather, disease or pest to which that strain is susceptible can wipe out the whole crop.

At present the Ug99 fungus, called stem rust, which emerged a decade ago in Africa, could wipe out more than 80 percent of the world’s wheat crops as it spreads, according to a 2009 article in the L. A. Times. Recent studies follow its appearance in other countries downwind of eastern Africa where it originated, including Yemen and Iran (where revolutionaries are already protesting rising prices and shortages), which opens the possibility of its emergence further downwind in Central and Eastern Asia. The race is on to breed resistant plants before it reaches Canada or the U.S. But it can take a decade or more to create a universally adaptable new genetic line that is resistant to a new disease like stem rust that can travel much faster than that. The current spike in the price of wheat is due in part to Ug99 which might properly be renamed “Ugh.”

4) Climate instability. Bad — uncongenial — weather has lately devastated crops in the upper Midwest, Florida, Mexico, Russia, China, Australia, parts of Africa and elsewhere. Many climate scientists believe we’ve passed the equivalent of peak friendly and familiar weather, too. And while increasing heat will bedevil harvests, intense cold, downpours and flooding, drought and destructive storm systems will make farming an increasingly hellish occupation if profit is what’s being farmed for.

The transitional climate will be unpredictable from season to season and will produce more extremes of weather and weather-related disasters, which means farmers will not be able to assume much about growing seasons, rainfall patterns and getting crops through to harvest. If the past is precedent, the transition from the climate we’ve been used to for 10,000 years to whatever stable climate emerges out of climate chaos next, could take decades, centuries or even millennia. Especially if we keep messing with it. When a whole nation’s or region’s staple crops, especially grains, are lost or on-again-off-again, everything down the line from the crops themselves become more expensive, from meat, poultry and dairy to every kind of processed food. I.e., the food we shop for as if supermarkets were actually where food comes from.

5) The roller-coaster economy. This isn’t the place for me to offer my explanation for the probability of global economic collapse. (More on that here.) No pundits, talking-heads or economic analysts (well, very few) deny there are rough economic times ahead. Even many of the cautious among them acknowledge that we may be looking at five or six years of high unemployment and many of the lost jobs won’t be coming back. The less cautious, like me, predict the collapse of the whole fossil-fueled, funny-money, inequitable, overly complicated global economic system in the lifetimes of anyone under 50. Well, at the rate we’re going in all the wrong directions politically and economically, I hazard the guess, anyone under 80.

Clearly, depending on the present system to provide us with most or all of our food reliably or long-term, is unwise in the extreme. Which is how we get back to why we need to garden as if our lives depended on it. Bringing food production processes and systems closer to home is going to prove vital to our survival. We need to take producing our own and each other’s food as seriously as we’ve taken producing a money income because growing numbers of us won’t have enough money to buy food in the conventional ways and there will be less of it to buy. So what’s our recourse?

Gardening Like Everybody’s Business

Under the influence and auspices of the prevailing economy, most Americans have forgotten how to provide for themselves. We’ve become accustomed to earning money with which we buy provisions. That process is about to have the legs kicked out from under it. Instead of earning money (or its funny-money kin like credit cards) to buy the things we need, we’ll need to start providing more of those things for ourselves and each other locally and (bio)regionally. Gardening — and small-scale farming — while they will need to be undertaken in a businesslike fashion will be less about doing business than about everyone’s having something to eat and more people being busy providing it. And while not everyone will be able to garden or farm, we are all able to get up close and personal with those who do.

Ellen LaConte, an independent scholar, organic gardener and freelance writer living in the Yadkin River watershed of the Piedmont bioregion of North Carolina, is a contributing editor to Green Horizon Magazine and the Ecozoic. Her most recent book is Life Rules (Green Horizon/iUniverse, 2010). LaConte publishes a quarterly online newsletter, Starting Point.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from the Cornucopia Institute

Lawsuit Filed To Protect Themselves from Unfair Patent Enforcement on Genetically Modified Seed

Action Would Prohibit Biotechnology Giant from Suing Organic Farmers and Seed Growers If Innocently Contaminated by Roundup Ready Genes

NEW York: On behalf of 60 family farmers, seed businesses and organic agricultural organizations, the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) filed suit today against Monsanto Company challenging the chemical giant’s patents on genetically modified seed. The organic plaintiffs were forced to sue preemptively to protect themselves from being accused of patent infringement should their crops ever become contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed.

Monsanto has sued farmers in the United States and Canada, in the past, when there are patented genetic material has inadvertently contaminated their crops.

A copy of the lawsuit can be found at:
(http://www.pubpat.org/assets/files/seed/OSGATA-v-Monsanto-Complaint.pdf)

The case, Organic Seed Growers Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto, was filed in federal district court in Manhattan and assigned to Judge Naomi Buchwald. Plaintiffs in the suit represent a broad array of family farmers, small businesses and organizations from within the organic agriculture community who are increasingly threatened by genetically modified seed contamination despite using their best efforts to avoid it. The plaintiff organizations have over 270,000 members, including thousands of certified organic family farmers.

“This case asks whether Monsanto has the right to sue organic farmers for patent infringement if Monsanto’s transgenic seed or pollen should land on their property,” said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s Executive Director. “It seems quite perverse that an organic farmer contaminated by transgenic seed could be accused of patent infringement, but Monsanto has made such accusations before and is notorious for having sued hundreds of farmers for patent infringement, so we had to act to protect the interests of our clients.”

Once released into the environment, genetically modified seed can contaminate and destroy organic seed for the same crop. For example, soon after Monsanto introduced genetically modified seed for canola, organic canola became virtually impossible to grow as a result of contamination.

Organic corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets and alfalfa also face the same fate, as Monsanto has released genetically modified seed for each of those crops as well.

Monsanto is currently developing genetically modified seed for many other crops, thus putting the future of all food, and indeed all agriculture, at stake.

“Monsanto’s threats and abuse of family farmers stops here. Monsanto’s genetic contamination of organic seed and organic crops ends now,” stated Jim Gerritsen, a family farmer in Maine who raises organic seed and is President of lead plaintiff Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association. “Americans have the right to choice in the marketplace – to decide what kind of food they will feed their families.”

“Family-scale farmers desperately need the judiciary branch of our government to balance the power Monsanto is able to wield in the marketplace and in the courts,” said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst for The Cornucopia Institute, one of the plaintiffs. “Monsanto, and the biotechnology industry, have made great investments in our executive and legislative branches through campaign contributions and powerful lobbyists in Washington.”

In the case, PUBPAT is asking Judge Buchwald to declare that if organic farmers are ever contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed, they need not fear also being accused of patent infringement. One reason justifying this result is that Monsanto’s patents on genetically modified seed are invalid because they don’t meet the “usefulness” requirement of patent law, according to PUBPAT’s Ravicher, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney in the case.

“Evidence cited by PUBPAT in its opening filing today proves that genetically modified seed has negative economic and health effects, while the promised benefits of genetically modified seed – increased production and decreased herbicide use – are false,” added Ravicher who is also a Lecturer of Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.

Ravicher continued, “Some say transgenic seed can coexist with organic seed, but history tells us that’s not possible, and it’s actually in Monsanto’s financial interest to eliminate organic seed so that they can have a total monopoly over our food supply,” said Ravicher. “Monsanto is the same chemical company that previously brought us Agent Orange, DDT, PCB’s and other toxins, which they said were safe, but we know are not. Now Monsanto says transgenic seed is safe, but evidence clearly shows it is not.”

The plaintiffs in the suit represented by PUBPAT are: Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association; Organic Crop Improvement Association International, Inc.; OCIA Research and Education Inc.; The Cornucopia Institute; Demeter Association, Inc.; Navdanya International; Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association; Northeast Organic Farming Association/Massachusetts Chapter, Inc.; Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont; Rural Vermont; Ohio Ecological Food Farm Association; Southeast Iowa Organic Association; Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society; Mendocino Organic Network; Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance; Canadian Organic Growers; Family Farmer Seed Cooperative; Sustainable Living Systems; Global Organic Alliance; Food Democracy Now!; Family Farm Defenders Inc.; Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund; FEDCO Seeds Inc.; Adaptive Seeds, LLC; Sow True Seed; Southern Exposure Seed Exchange; Mumm’s Sprouting Seeds; Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co., LLC; Comstock, Ferre Co., LLC; Seedkeepers, LLC; Siskiyou Seeds; Countryside Organics; Cuatro Puertas; Interlake Forage Seeds Ltd.; Alba Ranch; Wild Plum Farm; Gratitude Gardens; Richard Everett Farm, LLC; Philadelphia Community Farm, Inc; Genesis Farm; Chispas Farms LLC; Kirschenmann Family Farms Inc.; Midheaven Farms; Koskan Farms; California Cloverleaf Farms; North Outback Farm; Taylor Farms, Inc.; Jardin del Alma; Ron Gargasz Organic Farms; Abundant Acres; T D Willey Farms; Quinella Ranch; Nature’s Way Farm Ltd.; Levke and Peter Eggers Farm; Frey Vineyards, Ltd.; Bryce Stephens; Chuck Noble; LaRhea Pepper; Paul Romero; and, Donald Wright Patterson, Jr.

MORE:

Dr. Carol Goland, Ph.D., Executive Director of plaintiff Ohio Ecological Food Farm Association (OEFFA) said, “Consumers indicate, overwhelmingly, that they prefer foods made without genetically modified organisms. Organic farms, by regulation, may not use GMOs, while other farmers forego using them for other reasons. Yet the truth is that we are rapidly approaching the tipping point when we will be unable to avoid GMOs in our fields and on our plates. That is the inevitable consequence of releasing genetically engineered materials into the environment. To add injury to injury, Monsanto has a history of suing farmers whose fields have been contaminated by Monsanto’s GMOs. On behalf of farmers who must live under this cloud of uncertainty and risk, we are compelled to ask the Court to put an end to this unconscionable business practice.”

Rose Marie Burroughs of plaintiff California Cloverleaf Farms said, “The devastation caused by GMO contamination is an ecological catastrophe to our world equal to the fall out of nuclear radiation. Nature, farming and health are all being affected by GMO contamination. We must protect our world by protecting our most precious, sacred resource of seed sovereignty. People must have the right to the resources of the earth for our sustenance. We must have the freedom to farm that causes no harm to the environment or to other people. We must protect the environment, farmers’ livelihood, public health and people’s right to non GMO food contamination.”

Jim Gerritsen, a family farmer in Maine who raises organic seed and is President of lead plaintiff Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association based in Montrose, Colorado, said, “Today is Independence Day for America. Today we are seeking protection from the Court and putting Monsanto on notice. Monsanto’s threats and abuse of family farmers stops here. Monsanto’s genetic contamination of organic seed and organic crops ends now. Americans have the right to choice in the marketplace – to decide what kind of food they will feed their families
- and we are taking this action on their behalf to protect that right to choose. Organic farmers have the right to raise our organic crops for our families and our customers on our farms without the threat of invasion by Monsanto’s genetic contamination and without harassment by a reckless polluter. Beginning today, America asserts her right to justice and pure food.”

Ed Maltby, Executive Director of plaintiff Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance (NODPA) said, “It’s outrageous that we find ourselves in a situation where the financial burden of GE contamination will fall on family farmers who have not asked for or contributed to the growth of GE crops. Family farmers will face contamination of their crops by GE seed which will threaten their ability to sell crops as organically certified or into the rapidly growing ‘Buy Local’ market where consumers have overwhelmingly declared they do not want any GE crops, and then family farmers may be faced by a lawsuit by Monsanto for patent infringement. We take this action to protect family farms who once again have to bear the consequences of irresponsible actions by Monsanto.”

David L. Rogers, Policy Advisor for plaintiff NOFA Vermont said, “Vermont’s farmers have worked hard to meet consumers’ growing demand for certified organic and non-GE food. It is of great concern to them that Monsanto’s continuing and irresponsible marketing of GE crops that contaminate non-GE plantings will increasingly place their local and regional markets at risk and threaten their livelihoods.”

Dewane Morgan of plaintiff Midheaven Farms in Park Rapids, Minnesota, said, “For organic certification, farmers are required to have a buffer zone around their perimeter fields. Crops harvested from this buffer zone are not eligible for certification due to potential drift from herbicide and fungicide drift. Buffer zones are useless against pollen drift. Organic, biodynamic, and conventional farmers who grow identity-preserved soybeans, wheat and open-pollinated corn often save seed for replanting the next year. It is illogical that these farmers are liable for cross-pollination contamination.”

Jill Davies, Director of plaintiff Sustainable Living Systems in Victor, Montana, said, “The building blocks of life are sacred and should be in the public domain. If scientists want to study and manipulate them for some supposed common good, fine. Then we must remove the profit motive. The private profit motive corrupts pure science and increasingly precludes democratic participation.”

David Murphy, founder and Executive Director of plaintiff Food Democracy Now! said, “None of Monsanto’s original promises regarding genetically modified seeds have come true after 15 years of wide adoption by commodity farmers. Rather than increased yields or less chemical usage, farmers are facing more crop diseases, an onslaught of herbicide-resistant superweeds, and increased costs from additional herbicide application. Even more appalling is the fact that Monsanto’s patented genes can blow onto another farmer’s fields and that farmer not only loses significant revenue in the market but is frequently exposed to legal action against them by Monsanto’s team of belligerent lawyers. Crop biotechnology has been a miserable failure economically and biologically and now threatens to undermine the basic freedoms that farmers and consumers have enjoyed in our constitutional democracy.”

Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst for plaintiff The Cornucopia Institute said, “We need the court system to offset this power and protect individual farmers from corporate tyranny. Farmers have saved seeds since the beginning of agriculture by our species. It is outrageous that one corporate entity, through the trespass of what they refer to as their ‘technology,’ can intimidate and run roughshod over family farmers in this country. It should be the responsibility of Monsanto, and farmers licensing their technology, to ensure that genetically engineered DNA does not trespass onto neighboring farmland. It is outrageous, that through no fault of their own, farmers are being intimidated into not saving seed for fear that they will be doggedly pursued through the court system and potentially bankrupted.”

ABOUT PUBPAT

The Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) is a not-for-profit legal services organization affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
PUBPAT protects freedom in the patent system by representing the public interest against undeserved patents and unsound patent policy. More information about PUBPAT is available from www.pubpat.org.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

The following video begs the question: Are big green NGOs starting to catch on? We’ve included some comments and critiques from several environmentalists in response to NRDC’s new video.

–The GJEP Team

Their touting of grasses and residues is concerning. Though it is a big big big step for them… they can’t let go. Also concerning – they mention “sustainabiity standards”.  In Europe that meant putting some words on paper that convinced people things would be handled well. Then everyone patted each other on the back, packed their bags and went home…and industry carried on.

***

In sort of right direction perhaps but I really worry about their continued line that biomass energy can be “sustainably” met with agricultural residues and grasses, presumably North American energy crops such as miscanthus and switchgrass? Or do they mean destroying southern farmlands with sugar cane, bamboo and so on?. It’s misleading at best and potentially damaging to food sovereignty and truly sustainable agriculture efforts.  At least they no longer support corn ethanol as they used to  - but when it comes to bioenergy dreaming it seems they still.. can’t quite .. let … go….

***

Video is nice. Let’s hope they make some more public pronouncements in D.C.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from the Scotsman

In an open letter to the Scottish Government, a number of organisations including the US arm of Friends of the Earth called on ministers to throw out the plans.

Forth Energy plans to bring wood from North America to fuel plants in Leith, Dundee, Grangemouth and Rosyth.

However, American environmentalists said that along with other plants, the facilities would create “massive demand” for wood from the southeastern US.

The organisations, which include Save America’s Forests and the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, also raised doubts about claims that all the wood would be from sustainable sources.

The letter states: “We recently reviewed Forth Energy’s proposals for these biomass power stations, which would burn 5.3 million tonnes of biomass per year.

“Forth Energy states that nearly 90 per cent of this biomass would be imported. They expect that 75 percent of the imported biomass would be sourced from (or via) Florida. This implies that around 3.6m tonnes of biomass would be exported from Florida to Forth Energy facilities. Such massive demand will have serious impact on forests in the southeastern US, and on existing forest products industries.”

The letter concludes: “Given the massive quantities of wood – most of which will be imported from our forests – that Forth Energy facilities would burn, the inefficiency of biomass electricity generation, the emerging science indicating that bioelectricity is not necessarily ‘carbon neutral’ or ‘clean’, the human health impacts of emissions, and the unreliability of forest certification schemes – we call on the Scottish Government to reject Forth Energy’s proposed biomass electricity facilities.”

The letter is one of the most high-profile objections to the plans, which are also being opposed by local politicians and residents.

Calum Wilson, managing director of Forth Energy, said: “Forth Energy proposes to use only sustainably sourced fuel from purpose grown and managed forestry that has been certified as sustainable by an internationally recognised third party.

“Studies conducted by SIStech at Heriott-Watt University have confirmed that the Forth Energy plants would represent less than 0.5 per cent of the global demand for biomass for electricity production.”

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from IPS News

Gonzalo Ortiz* – Tierramérica

NUEVA LOJA, Ecuador, Mar 29 (IPS) – When the trunks of the trees

Rosa Tanguila cleaning up oil residue near her rainforest community. Credit:Gonzalo Ortiz/IPS

move with every step you take, you know you are in a swamp. This is what happens when you walk over the seemingly firm and vegetation-covered ground over what was once a pit used to dump oil sludge in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest.

The extent and impact of oil contamination on the environment and human health in northeastern Ecuador are much worse than anyone could imagine, as Tierramérica discovered during an extensive tour of the area.

This reporter travelled 400 kilometres of highways and roads in the northeastern provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana and visited six communities affected and 12 sites contaminated by the U.S. oil company Texaco during its oil exploration and production activities between 1964 and 1990.

The swamp with the moving trees was the “pool” filled with oil waste from the Yuca 9 well, one of 162 that Texaco claims to have cleaned up or “remediated” between 1995 and 1998.

These pools or pits, some of them as big as a football field, were used to dump mud and other waste produced by oil drilling, and even human faeces and garbage, since there were no sanitary landfills or wastewater treatment facilities built.

In a sentence handed down by a judge in Nueva Loja, the capital of Sucumbíos, on Feb. 14, the U.S. corporation Chevron, which now owns Texaco, was ordered to pay 9.5 billion dollars as compensation for the damages to the environment and human health caused by its subsidiary.

The plaintiffs – indigenous people and farmers organised in the Asamblea de Afectados por Texaco (AAT – Assembly of those Affected by Texaco) – have appealed the verdict, as they consider the amount awarded insufficient to remedy the disaster, including the impacts on human health. Chevron has also appealed, claiming that the lawsuit is “fraudulent”. The case will now move up to the Provincial Court of Sucumbíos.

In an agreement signed in 1995 with the Ecuadorian government, Texaco assumed responsibility for remediation of one third of the environmental liabilities resulting from the oil operations in the rainforest. The other two thirds corresponded to the government. At the trial, Chevron alleged that its clean-up obligations had been satisfactorily fulfilled as of 1998.

But as Tierramérica was able to observe first hand, the “remediation” of the toxic oil waste pools consisted of filling them with sticks, tires, tanks and scrub and then covering it all up with soil.

Over the following 15 years, thanks to the fertile Amazon rainforest climate, these areas have become overgrown with vegetation and even trees – the ones that move with every step you take near them. But you only have to dig down a metre and a half or two to find the oil sludge.

Two members of the Amazon Defense Coalition, the group of Amazonian grassroots organisations and communities that is backing the suit filed by the AAT, drilled holes like these for soil testing in numerous sites visited by Tierramérica, including the former waste pit at the Sacha 53 well, where Chevron claims to have reports attesting to successful remediation.

Texaco admits to having constructed a total of 326 oil waste pits while operating in the region, but court-ordered inspections and surveys established that at least 956 had been dug.

Even before 1995, Texaco had already covered up other pits that the Amazon Defense Coalition calls “hidden pools”.

When these pits were dug, they were not lined with any protective material whatsoever, which means toxic wastes seeped into the soil and eventually filtered into rivers and streams.

Most of the pits had gooseneck drainpipes installed beneath the surface of the sludge. Supposedly, when the level of liquid waste deposits rose as a result of rainfall, the oil residue would float to the top and clean water would wash through the drainpipes towards nearby waterways.

In practice, however, the drainpipes became a channel through which even more toxic wastes were washed into local streams and rivers, and continue to flow through them today.

One of the great paradoxes in this tropical rainforest where water is abundantly plentiful is that many villages and communities have no water for drinking, cooking or bathing, because the nearby rivers and streams are totally contaminated.

“This is the house of María Aguinda, one of the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit against Texaco in 1993. She joined the suit because this river that flows right past her house was contaminated with oil, and she had to walk two hours to fetch clean water from another river,” explained Rosa Tanguila, a Kichwa indigenous woman from the community of Rumipamba in Orellana.

The pollution around here was caused by the Auca 1 well. This is another area supposedly remediated by Texaco, but the toxins produced by oil operations seeped into the river and poisoned it very early on.

Pressured by protests and strikes waged by the local inhabitants, the state-owned oil company Petroecuador is carrying out ad hoc – and clearly insufficient – clean-up efforts in a river basin area the size of several football stadiums.

Tanguila is part of a team made up by indigenous people from the community hired by Petroecuador to clean up the area.

Their work consists of aiming a high-pressure stream of water at the riverbed to remove the sticky black sludge which is then channelled towards a trap, where Tanguila scoops it up with a small hand-held spade and dumps it into a metal tank.

“We’re cleaning up what Texaco says it left clean,” Tanguila quipped to Tierramérica.

The workers wear rubber overalls while they work submerged in the grey and black mud, but they have neither gloves nor goggles, leaving them exposed to contamination. There were also a number of small children playing on the banks of the same river and getting splashed with the same polluted water.

Donald Moncayo, another inhabitant of the area who works with the organisation Selva Viva, told Tierramérica, “At the very beginning, when Petroecuador took back control of the area, they should have conducted an assessment of the environmental liabilities or environmental damages that Texaco left behind here in the Amazon, but they didn’t do it.”

Why not? “Maybe because a lot of Texaco officials went on to join Petroecuador, and they had already planned what they were going to do: make the Ecuadorian government deal with the mess, and let Texaco off the hook,” said Moncayo.

Selva Viva, created by the Amazon Defense Coalition, is working to protect an area of the rainforest, rescue endangered species and promote ecotourism: a formidable task in the midst of so much toxic oil waste.

*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank. (END/2011)v

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from IPS News

Gonzalo Ortiz* – Tierramérica

NUEVA LOJA, Ecuador, Mar 29 (IPS) – When the trunks of the trees

Rosa Tanguila cleaning up oil residue near her rainforest community. Credit:Gonzalo Ortiz/IPS

move with every step you take, you know you are in a swamp. This is what happens when you walk over the seemingly firm and vegetation-covered ground over what was once a pit used to dump oil sludge in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest.

The extent and impact of oil contamination on the environment and human health in northeastern Ecuador are much worse than anyone could imagine, as Tierramérica discovered during an extensive tour of the area.

This reporter travelled 400 kilometres of highways and roads in the northeastern provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana and visited six communities affected and 12 sites contaminated by the U.S. oil company Texaco during its oil exploration and production activities between 1964 and 1990.

The swamp with the moving trees was the “pool” filled with oil waste from the Yuca 9 well, one of 162 that Texaco claims to have cleaned up or “remediated” between 1995 and 1998.

These pools or pits, some of them as big as a football field, were used to dump mud and other waste produced by oil drilling, and even human faeces and garbage, since there were no sanitary landfills or wastewater treatment facilities built.

In a sentence handed down by a judge in Nueva Loja, the capital of Sucumbíos, on Feb. 14, the U.S. corporation Chevron, which now owns Texaco, was ordered to pay 9.5 billion dollars as compensation for the damages to the environment and human health caused by its subsidiary.

The plaintiffs – indigenous people and farmers organised in the Asamblea de Afectados por Texaco (AAT – Assembly of those Affected by Texaco) – have appealed the verdict, as they consider the amount awarded insufficient to remedy the disaster, including the impacts on human health. Chevron has also appealed, claiming that the lawsuit is “fraudulent”. The case will now move up to the Provincial Court of Sucumbíos.

In an agreement signed in 1995 with the Ecuadorian government, Texaco assumed responsibility for remediation of one third of the environmental liabilities resulting from the oil operations in the rainforest. The other two thirds corresponded to the government. At the trial, Chevron alleged that its clean-up obligations had been satisfactorily fulfilled as of 1998.

But as Tierramérica was able to observe first hand, the “remediation” of the toxic oil waste pools consisted of filling them with sticks, tires, tanks and scrub and then covering it all up with soil.

Over the following 15 years, thanks to the fertile Amazon rainforest climate, these areas have become overgrown with vegetation and even trees – the ones that move with every step you take near them. But you only have to dig down a metre and a half or two to find the oil sludge.

Two members of the Amazon Defense Coalition, the group of Amazonian grassroots organisations and communities that is backing the suit filed by the AAT, drilled holes like these for soil testing in numerous sites visited by Tierramérica, including the former waste pit at the Sacha 53 well, where Chevron claims to have reports attesting to successful remediation.

Texaco admits to having constructed a total of 326 oil waste pits while operating in the region, but court-ordered inspections and surveys established that at least 956 had been dug.

Even before 1995, Texaco had already covered up other pits that the Amazon Defense Coalition calls “hidden pools”.

When these pits were dug, they were not lined with any protective material whatsoever, which means toxic wastes seeped into the soil and eventually filtered into rivers and streams.

Most of the pits had gooseneck drainpipes installed beneath the surface of the sludge. Supposedly, when the level of liquid waste deposits rose as a result of rainfall, the oil residue would float to the top and clean water would wash through the drainpipes towards nearby waterways.

In practice, however, the drainpipes became a channel through which even more toxic wastes were washed into local streams and rivers, and continue to flow through them today.

One of the great paradoxes in this tropical rainforest where water is abundantly plentiful is that many villages and communities have no water for drinking, cooking or bathing, because the nearby rivers and streams are totally contaminated.

“This is the house of María Aguinda, one of the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit against Texaco in 1993. She joined the suit because this river that flows right past her house was contaminated with oil, and she had to walk two hours to fetch clean water from another river,” explained Rosa Tanguila, a Kichwa indigenous woman from the community of Rumipamba in Orellana.

The pollution around here was caused by the Auca 1 well. This is another area supposedly remediated by Texaco, but the toxins produced by oil operations seeped into the river and poisoned it very early on.

Pressured by protests and strikes waged by the local inhabitants, the state-owned oil company Petroecuador is carrying out ad hoc – and clearly insufficient – clean-up efforts in a river basin area the size of several football stadiums.

Tanguila is part of a team made up by indigenous people from the community hired by Petroecuador to clean up the area.

Their work consists of aiming a high-pressure stream of water at the riverbed to remove the sticky black sludge which is then channelled towards a trap, where Tanguila scoops it up with a small hand-held spade and dumps it into a metal tank.

“We’re cleaning up what Texaco says it left clean,” Tanguila quipped to Tierramérica.

The workers wear rubber overalls while they work submerged in the grey and black mud, but they have neither gloves nor goggles, leaving them exposed to contamination. There were also a number of small children playing on the banks of the same river and getting splashed with the same polluted water.

Donald Moncayo, another inhabitant of the area who works with the organisation Selva Viva, told Tierramérica, “At the very beginning, when Petroecuador took back control of the area, they should have conducted an assessment of the environmental liabilities or environmental damages that Texaco left behind here in the Amazon, but they didn’t do it.”

Why not? “Maybe because a lot of Texaco officials went on to join Petroecuador, and they had already planned what they were going to do: make the Ecuadorian government deal with the mess, and let Texaco off the hook,” said Moncayo.

Selva Viva, created by the Amazon Defense Coalition, is working to protect an area of the rainforest, rescue endangered species and promote ecotourism: a formidable task in the midst of so much toxic oil waste.

*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank. (END/2011)v