Environment

Oil Lobby Claims More Production Won’t Raise Emissions

September 25, 2023 Taylor Noakes, DeSmog. Educate! Canada, Carbon emissions, Environment, Oil and Gas

It is a well established fact that increasing oil production leads to increased emissions, and that major reductions in oil production and consumption are necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. Despite the scientific consensus supporting this fact, a recent news release from a Canadian oil industry lobby group made the remarkable claim that Canadian oil production increased over the past decade while emissions decreased. The analysis note issued by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) was widely circulated in a Canadian Press wire story published on August 31 under the title “Oil and gas sector says new data shows it can both hike output and lower emissions.”

A Guide To Six Greenwashing Terms Big Ag Is Bringing To COP28

September 23, 2023 Rachel Sherrington and Hazel Healy, DeSmog. Educate! Big Ag, climate crisis, COP28, Environment, Food and Agriculture, greenwashing

As some of the biggest companies – in particular meat and dairy firms – grow more concerned about their climate-villain images, they are turning to greenwashing techniques: well-known tactics deployed by oil and gas industries to shift the debate away from meaningful action. Often valid concepts in and of themselves, the problem lies in how they are touted as enviro-friendly actions while companies fail to cut their contribution to global heating. The agriculture industry has a lot to be worried about. Meat emits around a third of global emissions of methane, and action to cut this greenhouse gas has been identified by the UN and world leaders as the quickest route to slowing global heating. Farming also relies on synthetic fertilisers that are both fossil-fuel-based and emit greenhouse gases, and drives deforestation.

How To Build The Future In Place: Taking The First Steps

September 23, 2023 Patrick Mazza, Resilience. Create! climate crisis, Environment, Localism, New Economy

Building the future in place envisions bringing together an ecosystem of community-based institutions and public policies that meets human needs and balances our relations within the natural world. It involves weaving together community initiatives and advocacy campaigns that now often operate in separate compartments to create a coherent politics, built around deep-rooted, place-based movements informed by comprehensive visions for transformative change at local and bioregional scales. It starts where markets and the system are failing, prioritizing communities and people who are being failed the most. In the process, it fills the greatest need now existing in our society, for community. In a fractured world where increasing disruptions can be expected, we need to somehow find our way back to human social solidarity, to being good neighbors. It’s not just climate. We face a profound crisis of global ecosystems.

Tens Of Thousands Take The Streets In New York City

September 18, 2023 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. Resist! climate crisis, Climate March, Environment, Fossil Fuels, Joe Biden, New York City, Oil and Gas

Tens of thousands poured into the streets of New York City on Sunday for the largest climate mobilization in the U.S. in years, with organizers and marchers telling President Joe Biden to stop approving planet-wrecking fossil fuel projects and start doing everything in his power to accelerate the nation's renewable energy transition. Campaigners expressed outrage that Biden has refused to declare a national climate emergency and is planning to skip United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' Climate Ambition Summit on Wednesday. "It's unbelievable that Biden is sitting on the sidelines when he's got more power than anyone on Earth to end deadly fossil fuels," said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

A Toxic Polluter Is Shutting Down, Thanks To Resident Organizing

September 15, 2023 Lylla Younes, Next City. Resist! Environment, health, Memphis, pollution

In a major victory for the people of south Memphis, a plant that uses carcinogenic ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment announced this fall that it is shutting down. The decision by Sterilization Services of Tennessee follows more than a year of dogged organizing by residents and activists fed up with the industrial pollution that the company, and more than 20 others, releases into their community. Ethylene oxide, an odorless and colorless gas, has been linked to multiple forms of cancer. “We’re relieved that the community will soon have one less polluting facility that they have to contend with,” Amanda Garcia, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Grist.

The Importance Of Shining A Light On Hidden Toxic Histories

September 15, 2023 Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, Scheer Post. Organize! Environment, History, pollution, Toxic Chemicals

Indianapolis proudly claims Elvis’ last concert, Robert Kennedy’s speech in response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and the Indianapolis 500. There’s a 9/11 memorial, a Medal of Honor Memorial and a statue of former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. What few locals know, let alone tourists, is that the city also houses one of the largest dry cleaning Superfund sites in the U.S. From 1952 to 2008, Tuchman Cleaners laundered clothes using perchloroethylene, or PERC, a neurotoxin and possible carcinogen. Tuchman operated a chain of cleaners throughout the city, which sent clothes to a facility on Keystone Avenue for cleaning.

The Beauty, Challenges, And Potential Of Living In Ecocommunity

September 14, 2023 Erik Assadourian, Resilience. Create! Community, Ecocommunity, Environment, Sustainability

In 2007, while studying sustainable communities for a chapter on the subject for State of the World 2008, I had the chance to visit several ecovillages. But none stood out like the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Surrounded by car-centric city sprawl, it was a tiny little oasis of green—literally and figuratively, with it being populated by many environmental activists. It was inspiring to meet them and learn about their efforts, and I daydreamed about what would happen if there was a little urban ecovillage in every city incubating citywide change, catalyzing human-centric infrastructure changes, teaching permaculture techniques, and so on.

Hundreds Of Scientists Endorse Demands Of March To End Fossil Fuels

September 13, 2023 Seth Gladstone, Food & Water Watch. Resist! climate crisis, Climate March, Energy, Environment, Joe Biden, Oil & Gas

Nearly 400 scientists signed a letter today endorsing the demands of the March to End Fossil Fuels, which will take place Sunday in New York City. Original signers of the letter include noted climate, public health and environmental scientists Rose Abramoff, Robert Howarth, Mark Jacobson, Peter Kalmus, Sandra Steingraber, Farhana Sultana, Lucky Tran and Aradhna Tripati. Addressed to President Biden, the demands of the letter and march include: halting federal approval of new fossil fuel projects, like pipelines and export terminals; phasing out oil and gas extraction on public lands and waters; and declaring a climate emergency

After A Century, Oil And Gas Problems Persist On Navajo Lands

September 10, 2023 Jerry Redfern, Scheer Post. Educate! Environment, Indigenous Sovereignty, Navajo nation, Oil and Gas

It’s a Saturday morning in late June and Garry Jay, a member of the Navajo Nation, pilots a white crew-cab Chevy pickup on a lumpy dirt road across the grasslands north of his house in Shiprock, New Mexico, heading for the round, wood-framed hogan his grandfather built by hand in the 1970s. His route weaves 20 miles among the hundreds of oil wells that dot Horseshoe Canyon as he chases the bittersweet memories of childhood weekends and summers 40 years ago in that house, on that land, with his grandparents. The family’s former winter sheep ranch sits at the base of a sharp cliff, five miles south of the Colorado border.

No Parties On A Dead Planet: It’s Time We Reimagine Burning Man

September 10, 2023 Corinne Loperfido, In These Times. Educate! Burning Man, climate crisis, Environment, Localism

For the past 37 years, people have flocked to Burning Man to celebrate art, radical self expression and community. The first iteration of Burning Man began in 1986 when a small group of friends met on a San Francisco beach with an eight-foot statue of a man they built with scrap lumber. They soaked the statue in gasoline and burned it, symbolizing the destruction of the powers that be. The world does not look today as it did in 1986: As about 72,000 “Burners” lined up in their cars and campers to take reprieve from the grind of capitalism and attend this year’s Burning Man, which now convenes in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, a group of climate activists from Seven Circles Alliance blocked the road.

South Dakota PUC Denies Application For Navigator CO2 Pipeline

September 8, 2023 Caleb Barber, Mitchell Republic. Educate! Carbon Capture, Environment, Pipelines, South Dakota

Pierre, SD - The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday, Sept. 6, unanimously denied Navigator CO2 Ventures' project application to build a CO2 pipeline in the state, determining that the company did not seem to be fully intent on complying with the law of the land if its application for the Heartland Greenway Pipeline was approved. "The burden of proof is on the applicant," Commissioner Kristie Fiegen said. "Here, they have raised their hand and have chose to not comply and have asked for an exemption from local laws." Navigator responded to the decision saying it will evaluate the written decision of the Public Utility Commission once issued and determine its course of action in South Dakota thereafter.

These Cities Are Depaving For A Cooler Future

September 2, 2023 Lucy Sherriff, Next City. Create! Asphalt, climate crisis, Depaving, Environment

It all started because a man named Arif Khan wanted a garden. In 2007, he had recently moved into a house in Portland, Oregon, whose backyard was covered in asphalt. Some friends helped him tear up the impervious surface, and soon after, they won a small grant to carry out a similar project in front of a local cafe. “It was a one-off,” said Ted Labbe, co-founder of Depave, an urban greening movement. “But it was so successful that the next year we got solicited to do three projects, and then five the year after that. It just kept escalating.” In the 15 years since breaking ground on Khan’s backyard, Depave has completed 75 projects in schoolyards, churches and other community spaces across Portland.

Two Degrees Of Warming Could Cause One Billion Deaths Over Next Century

August 31, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, Deaths, Environment, Oil and Gas, wealth inequality

A new study by Joshua Pearce of London’s Western University and Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz in Austria has found that, if global heating reaches or surpasses two degrees Celsius by the year 2100, there is a high probability that over the next century humans, mostly the wealthiest, will be responsible for the deaths of approximately one billion mostly poorer humans. Many of the most powerful and profitable businesses on the planet are part of the oil and gas industry, which is both indirectly and directly responsible for over 40 percent of carbon emissions, which impact billions of lives in some of the world’s most remote communities that have the least resources, reported Western News.

The Wood Pellet Industry: A Dual Threat To Poor, Rural Communities

August 28, 2023 James L. Vanhise, Resilience. Educate! Energy, Environment, health, rural communities, Wood Pellets

Wood pellets are a form of biomass that is versatile, concentrated and easily transportable. But making wood pellets is dirty and energy-intensive. After tree wood is dried and ground into sawdust, it is heated and pressed through molds to form small, cylindrical chunks of dense wood fiber. This form of biomass offers a least two advantages for energy producers. First, converting coal-fired power plants to burn wood pellets is relatively easy. Second, with much of the moisture removed, pellets are more economical to transport than raw wood. This is a significant benefit, since virtually all the industrial pellets made in the US are shipped overseas.

Growing Number Of Countries Consider Making Ecocide A Crime

August 27, 2023 Isabella Kaminski, The Guardian. Create! Ecocide, Environment, Legal System, Mexico

A growing number of countries are considering introducing laws to make ecocide a crime. Mexico is the latest country where politicians are seeking to deter environmental damage – and to get justice for its victims – by criminalising it. Karina Marlen Barrón Perales, congresswoman for Nuevo León, has submitted a bill to the Mexican congress introducing a new crime of “ecocide”. While damaging the environment is already a civil offence in most countries, recognition of ecocide elevates the most egregious cases to a crime – with accompanying penalties.

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