pollution

Report: Plastic Pollution Is A Social Justice Issue

April 5, 2021 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Educate! Environment, health, Plastic, pollution

Plastic pollution isn't just a threat to non-human life like turtles and whales. It's also a major environmental justice problem. That's the conclusion of a new report released Tuesday from the UN Environment Program and ocean justice non-profit Azul, titled Neglected: Environmental Justice Impacts of Plastic Pollution. "Plastic pollution is a social justice issue," report coauthor and Azul founder and executive director Marce Gutiérrez-Graudiņš said in a press release. "Current efforts, limited to managing and decreasing plastic pollution, are inadequate to address the whole scope of problems plastic creates, especially the disparate impacts on communities affected by the harmful effects of plastic at every point from production to waste."

Highlighting The Too-Often Invisible Labor Of Mothers, Who Protect Us And Lead Us

March 13, 2021 Veronica Coptis, Coalfield Justice. Resist! Children, Fracking, health, pollution

This week two major publications were released that highlight public health impacts on people living next to oil and gas operations. The Environmental Health News released their investigation looking at how chemicals associated with oil and gas are present at levels 90 times higher than the average in families’ urine, including samples from children. The New Yorker published “When the Kids Started Getting Sick” by Eliza Griswold, a deep dive on the increase in rare bone cancers in the region. These articles highlight the reality of so many in our communities, and because they reflect that lived reality, they hit home. For that reason, this blog goes a bit beyond simply providing information.

US Military Exposed 600,000 To Toxins In Japan And Micronesia

March 12, 2021 John Reinsch, Truthout. Educate! Environmental Destruction, pollution, US Foreign Bases, US Foreign Policy

Most Americans trust the military; a 2020 poll found 72 percent with “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in that institution, edged out only by small business. Many were likely picturing enlisted persons, but their trust often extends to the leadership, both uniformed and civilian. However, those making life-and-death decisions for both U.S. troops and people of other countries — even in the absence of war — deserve our serious scrutiny. A new book, Poisoning the Pacific, examines the military’s long role in the environmental degradation of East Asia and Pacific islands, severely impacting the health of the region’s people and U.S. personnel stationed there. Author Jon Mitchell is a Tokyo-based journalist, and much of his book focuses on Japan, especially its southernmost prefecture of Okinawa.

Investigation Into Chemical Exposure From Fracking Provokes Call For Rapid Phaseout

March 5, 2021 Jessica Corbett, Commondreams. Educate! Fracking, health, Pennsylvania, pollution

"While financial analysts, policymakers, and massive corporations squabble over the finer points of the fracking debate, families living amidst the wells day in and day out live in constant fear about what the industry might cost them—if they had another child, would they need to worry about birth defects? Are these exposures increasing their kids' cancer risk? Would it be safer to move to a place far away from all of this, even if it would also mean being far from their extended families, friends, and communities? And even if they could move, how far would they have to go to feel safe?" Those are just some of the questions facing the western Pennsylvania families featured in a report published Monday by Environmental Health News (EHN), a publication of the nonprofit Environmental Health Sciences. Five families from the region participated in a pilot study on the chemicals commonly found in emissions from fracking sites.

Mohawk Families Being Sickened By New Dump

December 27, 2020 Christopher Curtis, Ricochet Media. Educate! Canada, health, Indigenous Rights, pollution

Quebec - What would you do if you thought you were being poisoned? What if, for the past year, a rancid smell woke you up in the dead of night and sent you rushing to the bathroom so you didn’t cough blood onto your sheets? What if you had to tell your grandkids not to play in the yard because, when the smell comes, they get migraines and a dull ache in their legs? Or each time you turn on the washing machine, your house smells like raw sewage? What if you spent your whole life in the land of your ancestors and then, one day, an environmental disaster befell that land? And since that disaster, you have noticed your breathing is laboured and your water leaves a slimy film on your skin.

The Push For Nuclear Power In Space

December 17, 2020 Karl Grossman, OpEd News. Educate! Elon Musk, Nuclear Power, pollution, Space

Last week a SpaceX rocket exploded in a fireball at the SpaceX site in Texas. "Fortunately," reported Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News, "no one was aboard." But what if nuclear materials had been aboard? The nuclear space issue is one I got into 35 years ago when I learned from reading a U.S. Department of Energy news letter about two space shuttles, one the Challenger which was to be launched the following year with 24.2 pounds of plutonium aboard. The plutonium the shuttles were to carry aloft in 1986 was to be used as fuel in radioisotope thermoelectric generators RTGs that were to provide a small amount of electric power for instruments on space probes to be released from the shuttles once the shuttles achieved orbit.

Bags And Balloons: Plastic Pollution Choking Sea Life

November 21, 2020 Terra Daily. Educate! Oceans, Plastic, pollution, Seafood

A dead manatee in Florida was found to have swallowed so many plastic bags they formed a cantaloupe-sized ball in its stomach, while a baby turtle had its intestines perforated by tiny plastic fragments. They are some of 1,800 marine mammals and turtles found to have ingested or been entangled by plastic along American coastlines since 2009, according to a report from conservation NGO Oceana published Thursday. The group's report attempts to describe the cumulative impact of plastic pollution on marine fauna in the United States in the last decade, despite growing recycling practices.

On Contact: Chevron Vs Donziger

September 7, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Chevron, Corporatism, Court abuse, pollution

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Steven Donziger about the reach of corporate power. Donziger battled corporate oil giant Chevron over environmental pollution and destruction in Ecuador and won a settlement of $9.5 billion for indigenous communities. Since then, Chevron has waged a campaign against Donziger to try and destroy him economically, professionally and personally. He is on trial in federal court in New York on September 9 for contempt charges, which could send him to jail for six months.

Nuclear Power In The Green New Deal?

August 27, 2020 By M.V. Ramana and Schyler Edmunston, Beyond Nuclear International. Create! Green New Deal, Nuclear Energy, pollution, Uranium mining

Over the last few years, there has been a growing interest in a Green New Deal and there are many versions proposed in different countries. At the same time, there has also been criticism of these proposals on many counts, including the fact that they typically don’t include nuclear energy. This criticism misses a basic point: a Green New Deal is, by its very definition, much more than an emissions reduction plan. As we argue below, the other attributes that characterize Green New Deals, rule out nuclear energy as an option. Like the original New Deal of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, all Green New Deal proposals emphasize the creation of new jobs.

Fossil Fuel Industry Pollutes Black And Brown Communities

July 28, 2020 By Gin Armstrong and Derek Seidman, Eyes on the Ties. Educate! Oil and Gas Industry, Police abuse, pollution, Racism

Many of the most powerful oil and gas companies, private utilities, and financial institutions that drive environmental injustice are also backers of the same police departments – through their funding, sponsoring, and governing of police foundations – that tyrannize the very communities these corporate actors pollute. As demands continue to rise to defund the police and reinvest in Black and Brown communities, as well as to divest from the fossil fuel industry and reinvest in environmental justice and a just transition, the fossil fuel industry power structure presents a common foe for these interconnected fights.

Deep Sea Mining Threatens More Than The Seafloor

July 13, 2020 Climate and Capitalism. Educate! climate crisis, Deep Sea Mining, Oceans, pollution

Interest in deep-sea mining for copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, and other valuable metals has grown substantially in the last decade and mining activities are anticipated to begin soon. Deep-sea mining poses significant risks, not only to the area immediately surrounding mining operations but also to the water hundreds to thousands of feet above the seafloor, threatening vast midwater ecosystems. Currently, 30 exploration licenses cover about 580,000 square miles of the seafloor on the high seas and some countries are exploring exploitation in their own water as well. Thus far, most research assessing the impacts of mining and environmental baseline survey work has focused on the seafloor. However, large amounts of mud and dissolved chemicals are released during mining and large equipment produces extraordinary noise—all of which travel high and wide. Unfortunately, there has been almost no study of the potential effects of mining beyond the habitat immediately adjacent to extraction activities.

Exposed: States Relying On ‘House Of Cards’ To Pay For Coal Mine Cleanup

June 29, 2020 Mark Olalde, Desmog Blog. Educate! Coal Mining, Environment, pollution, West Virginia

For more than a century-and-a-half, the forests, streams, and hollows of the Appalachian Mountains have been scraped and gashed to unearth their heart of rich black coal. These lumps of hydrocarbons historically played a vital role in America’s electricity mix, accounting for a third of the country’s energy production as recently as 2008. But over the past decade, a devastating combination of forces has pummeled the industry, from cheap natural gas and the falling cost of renewables to growing public pressure to respond to the climate crisis. U.S. coal production has dropped 40 percent since its peak 12 years ago, and the commodity accounted for only 14 percent of the country’s electricity generation last year. With the coronavirus pandemic now stalling energy demand, coal production has dropped about 26 percent in the past 12 months alone, perhaps ringing the death knell for coal as an energy source in America.

Steven Donziger Challenged A Corporate Polluter And Won, Now They’re Trying To Ruin Him

June 1, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Amazon Rainforest, Chevron, Oil, pollution, Retaliation

Texaco was the first oil company to drill in the Amazon. To maximize profits, and because they thought they could get away with it, they did not take any steps to protect local communities or the environment from their toxic waste. For a long time, they did get away with it. Then a group of lawyers and organizations worked with locals to sue Chevron, which bought Texaco, and won a $9.5 billion judgment. Chevron refuses to pay and instead has gone after the lawyer, Steven Donziger, in unprecedented ways with a vengeance. We speak with Donziger and Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch.

Tree Deaths Linked To Leaks From Natural Gas Pipelines

May 22, 2020 Phil McKenna, Inside Climate News. Educate! Environmental Destruction, Gas Pipelines, pollution, Trees

Natural gas leaks from underground pipelines are killing trees in densely populated urban environments, a new study suggests, adding to concerns over such leaks fueling climate change and explosion hazards. The study, which took place in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a low-income immigrant community near Boston, also highlights the many interrelated environmental challenges in a city that faces high levels of air pollution, soaring summer temperatures and is now beset by one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the nation. Dead or dying trees were 30 times more likely to have been exposed to methane in the soil surrounding their roots than healthy trees, according to the study published last month in the journal Environmental Pollution.

Stop Reversals Of The Long-term Benefits Of The First Earth Day April 22, 1970

April 23, 2020 Ralph Nader. Resist! Congress, Earth Day, Environment, pollution

Earth Day, April 22, 1970, was the most consequential demonstration of civic energy in modern American history. Engaging nearly 20 million Americans participating in about 13,000 local events, this first Earth Day changed corporate and government policies through popular demands for clean air, water, soil, and food. Senator Gaylord Nelson launched Earth Day, having tired of Congressional inaction and the power of the corporate pollution lobby. Earth Day quickly became a grassroots educational and action-driven week of activities that aroused the country. Even reactionary President Nixon quickly planted a tree on the White House South lawn in recognition of the public support for environmentalism after he saw the huge turnouts at rallies and marches.

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