Tag Archives | Environmentalism

Assassinations of Environmental Activists Have Doubled Over the Last Decade

By on March 3, 2013 in News 24

Picture: Sigurdas (CC)

Fred Pearce writes at the Guardian:

Where is Sombath Somphone? With every day that passes, the fate of one of south-east Asia’s most high-profile environmental activists, who was snatched from the streets of Laos in December, becomes more worrisome.

His case has been raised by the State Department and countless NGOs around the world. But the authorities in Laos have offered no clue as to what happened after Sombath was stopped at a police checkpoint on a Saturday afternoon in the Lao capital of Vientiane as he returned home from his office. It looks increasingly like state kidnap — or worse, if recent evidence of the state-sponsored killings of environmental campaigners in other countries is anything to go by.

Personal danger is not what most environmentalists have in mind when they take up the cause of protecting nature and the people who rely on it in their daily lives.

… Read the rest

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Scientist: No One Has the Right to Have as Many Children as They Want

By on January 22, 2013 in News 79

Here’s a hot topic, and one that we’ve visited many, many times before here in the United States: Population growth. Anyone remember the Zero Population Growth movement of the sixties and seventies? I wonder how many ZPG activists have children (and grandchildren) of their own now? I’m not a dad, myself, and am pretty much sure that I’ll never be. What about you parents? How do you feel about population growth and control? What about the rest of you? How would we ever enforce such a thing, anyway?

Via Raw Story:

A Stanford professor and author of The Population Bomb recently published a paper in a scientific journal re-emphasizing climate change and population growth pose existential threats to humanity and in an interview with Raw Story said that giving people the right to have as many children as they want is “a bad idea.”

“The only criticism we’ve had on the paper is that it’s too optimistic,” said Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University and president of the Center for Conservation Biology.

… Read the rest

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2012: The Year We Did Our Best to Abandon the Natural World

By on January 4, 2013 in News 21

Picture: USDOD (PD)

George Monbiot writes in the Guardian:

It was the year of living dangerously. In 2012 governments turned their backs on the living planet, demonstrating that no chronic problem, however grave, will take priority over an immediate concern, however trivial. I believe there has been no worse year for the natural world in the past half-century.

Three weeks before the minimum occurred, the melting of the Arctic’s sea ice broke the previous record. Remnants of the global megafauna – such as rhinos and bluefin tuna – were shoved violently towards extinction. Novel tree diseases raged across continents. Bird and insect numbers continued to plummet, coral reefs retreated, marine life dwindled. And those charged with protecting us and the world in which we live pretended that none of it was happening.

Their indifference was distilled into a great collective shrug at the Earth Summit in June. The first summit, 20 years before, was supposed to have heralded a new age of environmental responsibility.

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Tiny Pacific Island Becomes The First Completely Solar-Powered Nation

By on November 17, 2012 in News 8

Think a completely renewable-energy-based society is a pipe dream? Tiny Tokelau will no longer rely on imported diesel, instead switching over to solar panels and coconut-based biofuel. Fiji, the Cook Islands, Samoa, and Tuvalu plan to follow suit in the next decade. Voice Of America reports:

The remote islands of Tokelau have become the first territory in the world to be powered by the sun, officials say. The move is expected to save money and ease the environmental burden of relying on imported fossil fuels.

“The Tokelau Renewable Energy Project is a world first. Tokelau’s three main atolls now have enough solar capacity, on average, to meet electricity needs,” said New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister Murray McCully in a statement. “Until now, Tokelau has been 100 percent dependent upon diesel for electricity generation, with heavy economic and environmental costs.”

The island nations of Samoa and Tuvalu are aiming to get all of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

… Read the rest

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Endocrine Disruptors from Personal Care Products Found in Statewide Survey of Minnesota’s Rivers and Lakes

By on October 24, 2012 in News 3

Via ScienceDaily:

A science team from Arizona State University, in collaboration with federal partners, has completed the first statewide analysis of freshwater bodies in Minnesota, finding widespread evidence of the presence of active ingredients of personal care products in Minnesota lakes, streams and rivers.

These products are a billion dollar industry and can be found in antimicrobial soaps, disinfectants, and sanitizers to scrub our hands and clean countertops. Hundreds of antimicrobial products are sold in the U.S., many marketed with efficacy claims that remain elusive due to the short duration of the average consumer’s handwashing practices. The fate of these products can be traced from home use to sewers to wastewater treatment plants to eventually, downstream bodies of water.

The research team focused on two active ingredients found prominently in anti-bacterial soaps — triclosan and triclocarban — which have come under scrutiny by the EPA and FDA due to their environmental and human health concerns.

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New Zealand Grants Personhood Rights To River

By on September 23, 2012 in News 11

In my eyes, this makes more sense than the Citizens United ruling. Via Care2:

In a landmark case for the Rights of Nature, officials in New Zealand recently granted the Whanganui, the nation’s third-longest river, with legal personhood “in the same way a company is, which will give it rights and interests”. The decision follows a long court battle for the river’s personhood initiated by the Whanganui River iwi, an indigenous community with strong cultural ties to the waterway.

Under the settlement, the river is regarded as a protected entity, under an arrangement in which representatives from both the iwi and the national government will serve as legal custodians towards the Whanganui’s best interests.

While it may seem an odd extension of rights, in many ways it harkens back to a time when mankind’s fate was more readily acknowledged as being intertwined with that of the rivers, lakes, and streams that sustained us.

… Read the rest

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Inside The FBI’s Manual On The Anarchist/Environmentalist Threat

By on September 20, 2012 in News 34

They are often students, are paranoid and resent authority, and hatch their plots in coffee houses and underground clubs. Via Green is the New Red, meet the FBI’s public enemy number one:

The materials…to train agents to identify and investigate “domestic terrorist” groups such as “black separatists,” anarchists, animal rights activists, and environmentalists…were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the ACLU. They offer additional insight into a disturbing pattern of FBI activity misrepresenting political activists as “terrorists” and manufacturing “domestic terrorism threats” where none exist.

Juxtapose this with militia extremists and white supremacists, who have murdered, lynched, bombed, assaulted government officials and created weapons of mass destruction. To most reasonable people, such a stark disparity between these groups would raise questions about how the FBI is allocating its domestic terrorism resources. How did such misguided policies come about?

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Fake Crowdsourced Ad Campaign Celebrates Shell Oil

By on July 18, 2012 in News 3

As the energy giant pushes into the Arctic, the Let’s Go Public! Arctic Ready ad contest, involving user-submitted captions paired with photos of the pristine north, has drawn attention with a clever simulation of corporate social media engagement going off the rails:

Here at Shell, we’re committed to online social media. After all, it’s the fuel that lubricates the engines of internet communication.

Today, we want to take the Arctic Ready message offline, directly to the drivers who benefit from Shell’s performance fuels. That’s why we’re launching a new campaign (deadline this Thursday!), from which the best ads will be printed and posted in strategic locations worldwide.

So take a moment to add your own slogan to our beautiful new collection of images. The next place you see it might be your own rearview mirror. Because tomorrow is yesterday, accelerated. Let’s go.

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U.S. Coast Guard Creates ‘Protest-Free Zone’ Surrounding Shell Oil Drilling Area In Alaska

By on July 2, 2012 in News 9

Odd how these protest-free zones always happen to coincide with where protest would be most necessary. PressTV writes:

The United States Coast Guard will establish and enforce “a 500-meter safety zone” around the Shell Oil Company’s drilling vessel Noble Discoverer as it drills exploratory offshore wells in the sensitive Arctic waters off the coast of Alaska beginning this July.

The ‘buffer zone’ would apply to all vessels, but the ‘special rules’ are clearly designed to make it more difficult for those trying to protest against the Shell’s oil drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas this summer.

“For any group or individual intending to conduct lawful demonstrations in the vicinity of the Noble Discoverer,” reads the USCG memo, “These demonstrations must be conducted outside the safety zone.” While acknowledging the negative impact on the “environment and indigenous people” a mid-ocean collision caused by environmental activists attempting to block or board the ship could have in the Arctic, the USCG report made no mention of what impact a massive oil spill in the area would have on the same.

… Read the rest

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