Up With Chris Hayes - 01/14/2012 - “Slow Motion Suicide” - this chart demonstrates the dearth of stories in the media regarding climate change. Special guest Dave Roberts from Grist.org reports on why the media isn’t covering this crucial topic.
Watch the video here:
Geoff Dembicki @ The Tyee ~ How Big Oil and Canada Thwarted US Carbon Standards: Emails show how a Washington lobbyist enlisted Canadian officials to beat back climate regulation.
Geoff Dembicki @ Salon ~ Big Oil and Canada thwarted U.S. carbon standards: Emails show how a Washington lobbyist enlisted Canadian officials to beat back U.S. carbon standards
The battle-plan is revealed in more 300 pages of personal emails obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the Alberta government. The story in the emails, reported for the first time in Salon and The Tyee, traces a year in the relationship of Michael Whatley, a GOP-connected oil industry lobbyist and his friend, Gary Mar, a smooth-talking and ambitious diplomat at the Canadian embassy in the Washington, DC. (…)
(via enlighteningnews)
Shell International spilled 13,000 gallons of oil and drilling fluids into the Gulf on Sunday while drilling an exploratory well near the site of last year’s Deepwater Horizon accident, according to a federal report on the spill.
The area where the well was being drilled is about 20 miles from the site of the BP oil spill. Shell is working in water more than 7,000 feet deep. The well was being drilled by the Deepwater Nautilus, according to federal records. That rig is owned and operated by Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon rig.
While a report Shell filed Monday morning with the National Response Center states that the company spilled 7,560 gallons of oil and 5,829 gallons of synthetic drilling fluids, company spokesperson Kelly op de Weegh said late Monday afternoon that no oil was spilled.
(Source: socialuprooting, via randomactsofchaos)
It was a simple gulp of water, but one that Japan’s government hopes will carry symbolic importance as it seeks to ease concern over decontamination efforts at the scene of the county’s nuclear crisis.
Yasuhiro Sonoda, an MP in the governing Democratic party of Japan (DPJ), was visibly nervous as his lips met a glass of water collected from inside two reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The 44-year-old had been cajoled into making the gesture by journalists who repeatedly asked him to substantiate government claims that decontamination efforts at the plant were progressing.
Full story: ‘Japanese MP drinks Fukushima water under pressure from journalists’
The State Department has admitted their environmental review of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline was conducted by a contractor paid for by the pipeline company itself, a potentially illegal conflict of interest first reported by ThinkProgress Green. The Canadian tar sands company TransCanada has applied to construct a major pipeline through the United States to pump tar sands crude to Texas refineries for the international oil market, and is awaiting approval by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. The State Department’s approval hinges upon a positive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), required by the National Environmental Policy Act to assess whether the pipeline is in the national interest.
A State Department official has admitted to the New York Times that the EIS was conducted by a company chosen and paid by TransCanada itself, flouting NEPA’s conflict-of-interest rules:
[Kerri-Ann Jones, the assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs] said that TransCanada had managed the bidding process and recommended three candidates with Cardno Entrix topping the list. The department vetted Cardno Entrix by consulting with other agencies like the Bureau of Land Management. TransCanada pays the consultant directly, but would not reveal the amount.
That Entrix was contracted by TransCanada to conduct the EIS first reported by ThinkProgress Green, now confirmed by the New York Times.
“Cardno Entrix did submit a disclosure statement acknowledging that it was paid $2.9 million to handle the environmental review of an earlier pipeline in the Keystone network,” the Times reports. “It did not mention another project it had done for TransCanada, consulting on a natural gas pipeline that runs through Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota.”
A spokesman for TransCanada, Terry Cunha, told the New York Times that his company had recommended contractors to the State Department based on “technical ability, experience, and appropriate personnel.” But he said the final contract for the environmental assessment “provides that Department of State directs Entrix. As a result, we don’t have a direct relationship with Entrix.”
(Source: socialuprooting)
Drilling will commence summer 2012 in the Chuckchi Sea, where Alaska and Russia meet. Environmental groups fume. Shell pleased. Rare species at risk.
Here is a round up:
- Approves former President Bush’s stalled plans to drill in Arctic
- Earth Justice sues
- Native Alaskans are pissed: “We have a right to life, to physical integrity, to security, and the right to enjoy the benefits of our culture. For this, we will fight, and this is why we have gone to court today. Our culture can never be bought or repaired with money. It is priceless,” Caroline Cannon, president of the Native Village of Point Hope, said in a press release.
- Shell Oil is pleased
- Crude prices drop
- Pew Center blasts Obama for politics over science stance, issues white paper
- University of Texas receives $5.6 million grant to study “safe oil extraction” without disturbing wildlife/ecosystems
- Home to thousands of rare species including bowhead, beluga, narwhals, and grey whales; ice, bearded, ribbon, and spotted seals; polar bears; puffins, auklets, sea ducks, and penguins; and cod, sharks, and eels.
- NASA reports sea-ice 2nd lowest levels ever recorded in the Chuckchi/Arctic
- National Snow & Ice Data Center: 40% lower than average ice extent - a loss the size of California, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington states combined
(via randomactsofchaos)
Keystone pipeline lobbyist, State Dept. too close, green group says
Emails between the TransCanada’s lobbyist and the State Department show a cozy relationship that indicates a U.S. bias toward the project.
(via socialuprooting)
Severn Suzuki speaking at the UN Earth Summit 1992
THE 12 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO SILENCED THE WORLD FOR 5 MINUTES
[This is so sad…fighting for her future…the future of our planet…This is a truly remarkable speech…what is so incredibly sad is that this was 20 years ago, and it has only gotten worse, so much worse.]
Raised in Vancouver and Toronto, Severn Cullis-Suzuki has been camping and hiking all her life. When she was 9 she started the Environmental Children’s Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They were successful in many projects before 1992, when they raised enough money to go to the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Their aim was to remind the decision-makers of who their actions or inactions would ultimately affect. The goal was reached when 12 yr old Severn closed a Plenary Session with a powerful speech that received a standing ovation.
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is worried that the EPA is going to regulate farm dust. So worried, in fact, that he pledged to eliminate the EPA during Thursday’s presidential debate. But maybe he should do some more research: It turns out, the EPA is actually doing nothing of the sort.
Who controls the food system?
Infographic from:
Oxfam’s new report: Growing a Better Future describes a new age of growing crisis: food price spikes and oil price hikes, devastating weather events, financial meltdowns, and global contagion. Behind each of these, slow-burn crises smoulder: creeping and insidious climate change, growing inequality, chronic hunger and vulnerability, the erosion of our natural resources.
Based on the experience and research of Oxfam staff and partners around the world and, Growing a Better Future shows how the food system is at once a driver of this fragility and highly vulnerable to it, and why in the twenty-first century it leaves 925 million people hungry.
The report presents new research forecasting price rises for staple grains in the range of 120–180 per cent within the next two decades, as resource pressures mount and climate change takes hold.
Growing a Better Future supports a new campaign with a simple message: another future is possible, and we can build it together.
(via socialuprooting)
Humans are living on a planet with finite resources. We must conserve and manage the natural world wisely if we want to survive. A multitude of human activities are destroying the environment as you read. What needs to be done is obvious. Greed, ignorance, and waste are threatening our very existence. Pollution, coupled with over fishing and soil erosion are just a few things that threaten life on this planet.
