Environment
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More than 1,000 people from throughout New York state converged on Albany
Jan. 9 to demand that Gov. Andrew Cuomo respond to the people and not the
natural gas corporations by immediately announcing a statewide ban against
hydraulic fracturing. The large energy companies in this state and their allies
in Albany would like to extract natural gas that is trapped in the widespread
rock formation known as Marcellus Shale through the process called hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking....
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This year, possibly for the first time ever, the United Mine Workers did not
endorse a presidential candidate. In 2008, the union was an early endorser of
Obama, and has usually supported Democratic candidates. The union’s
decision to sit it out this year was an indication of the crisis that has
befallen coal miners, who don’t know where to turn for help....
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Like a giant magnifying glass, a natural disaster reveals in startling
detail the dimensions of the social disaster that lie beneath....
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After superstorm Sandy we think “climate change.” It is back in
the headlines. But people in the Arctic have been noticing changes and coping
with them for many years. Now, sharp shifts in weather are occurring in the
Arctic, where ice and snow are an important part of life. These changes affect
transportation and food, making life much more difficult for Indigenous peoples
in the North....
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For years, Pennsylvania families living near natural gas drilling activity
have relied on the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to
determine if hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was impacting their well water.
Little did they know that the DEP was systematically withholding information on
potential contamination by issuing incomplete test results....
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On top of sanitation workers laboring 12-hour workdays and seven-day
workweeks, needed nonstop to clean up the city after Hurricane Sandy, one of
the workers’ biggest problems is the difficulty of obtaining fuel to get
to work. According to the president of the sanitation workers’ union,
Harry Nespoli: “They want to work but they have to have gas. People are
saying that they’re not going to give gas to Sanitation Workers.
That’s a total disgrace.” (thechiefleader.com, Nov. 9)...
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The distribution site was buzzing with activity. Carloads and even a small
U-Haul truck of aid were contributed by many volunteers. The area was so heavy
with activity that Occupy Sandy organizers had to assign traffic coordinators
to make sure donations were not blocking traffic....
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Nearly a week after Hurricane Sandy struck, as cold weather sets in and a new nor’easter storm threatens on Nov. 7, over a million households remain without power in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Some New Jersey communities are also without natural gas as a result of storm damage and may remain so for six to eight months....
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“We know a tidal surge of about four to six feet came
into the Reservation. We still do not have electricity. We had our Tribal
burial grounds halfway covered with water. Right now it is the electricity that
is needed which is the issue. It’s getting cold and some of our elders
don’t have ways to heat their home,” said Shinnecock Chairman
Trustee Randy King describing the situation on the Shinnecock Reservation on
eastern Long Island after Hurricane Sandy. (nativestrength.com)...
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A crisis arising out of a major natural disaster tends to reveal a society’s strengths and weaknesses, values and priorities, and forms of organization....
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After ravaging much of the Caribbean, Hurricane Sandy has hit the United
States. As of this writing, more than 8 million people here are without power,
38 are reported dead and still counting, and the damage is reckoned at many
tens of billions of dollars. No numbers have been put on personal losses of the
masses of people in terms of their homes, cars, household possessions, let
alone irreplaceable personal items of precious, sentimental value....
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Along with DuPont and Syngenta, Monsanto controls 47 percent of the
worldwide proprietary seed market....
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If genetically modified (GM) foods and genetically engineered (GE) agricultural products are as “safe” as manufacturers Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences claim, why go to such great lengths to block efforts to label them?...
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While staying aware of its destructive capacity, we can expand our view if
we also examine its weaknesses. The Pentagon’s Achilles’ heel lies
within the contradictions of the capitalist system that created this
monstrosity....
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There are times in history when war and politics converge with economics to
create a true turning point, a point at which things cannot and will not ever
be the same. Such points in time are marked by fierce struggle....
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Animated short on the impact of depleted uranium weapons and the
international campaign against them, produced by the International Coalition to
Ban Uranium Weapons and IKV Pax Christi....
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Philadelphia — With the stroke of a pen, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett exempted the state’s wealthiest counties from the direct impact of natural gas drilling. The controversial process of hydraulic fracturing — fracking — has taken a heavy toll on the rest of the state, turning many rural and once forested areas into industrial zones, contaminating air and water....
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Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana has not had much to say about the current deadly heat wave that has swept his state and much of the United States. Sitting in his air-conditioned office, he is largely insulated from the disaster that is sweeping not only Indianapolis, the state capital, but most of the country....
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The Campaign to Stop Killer Coke partnered with Occupy Atlanta, the International Action Center and other organizations to stage a two-prong action at the annual Coca-Cola stockholders’ meeting, held at the Cobb Galleria in suburban Atlanta on April 25....
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The potential environmental hazards resulting from the oil and natural gas industry’s drive for super-profits are becoming increasingly apparent and alarming. The evidence is surfacing from the Gulf of Mexico, two years after the major BP oil spill, to the waters of the Susquehanna River, heavily impacted by a decade of Marcellus Shale fracking....
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Longtime residents of the 32-unit Riverdale Mobile Home Village in Jersey Shore, Pa., read in the Feb. 18 Williamsport, Pa., Sun-Gazette that their leases were being terminated “immediately” and they would have to move by April 1....
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Monica Moorehead, a March 31st organizer, states, “Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, has told the world that her son is everybody's son. It is in this spirit that our coalition encourages all mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, cousins, nieces, girlfriends and spouses of all ages, nationalities, gender expressions and sexual preferences to attend along with
men.”...
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The tornado season in the United States started early this year — a whole season early. Winter’s grip was still on the land when deadly twisters in the Midwest and South disintegrated homes and flung people and animals around like rag dolls. Like everything else about the weather these days, that broke all kinds of records....
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After 11 earthquakes recently rocked northwestern Ohio, seismologists
acknowledged there is strong evidence linking the quakes to the disposal of
waste water produced in the process of drilling for natural gas, known as
hydraulic fracturing....
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A very important conference on climate change took place in Durban, South
Africa, during early December. COP 17 was sponsored by the United Nations and
was billed as an event that would bring all states and regions together to
hammer out a new agreement for limiting the rapid pace of global warming, which
many cite as the cause of the escalating problems of natural disasters,
droughts and mounting food deficits....
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Global warming has hit the Arctic region hard, making
the lives of the Native peoples living along the coast of Alaska in isolated
communities that depend on hunting and fishing for their survival much, much
harder....
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Is there a connection between the controversial natural gas drilling process
known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the extremely rare
5.8-magnitude earthquake that rocked Washington, D.C., and significant sections
of the U.S. East Coast on Aug. 23? This is a question many scientists are now
asking....
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Quemada (BURN): In the Nineteenth Century, the cynical and pragmatic British
agent William Walker (Marlon Brando) arrives in Queimada, a Portuguese colony
in the Antilles, to promote a revolution to benefit the sugar trade with
England. He sees in the water/luggage bearer, José Dolores, the necessary
potential to become the leader of the slave revolt. Dolores succeeds in
expelling the Portuguese troops from the island; but then the provisional
government of President Teddy Sanchez assumes power over Quemada with the
support of the British government. Ten years later William Walker is hired
again, but now by the Royal Company that is exploiting the sugar cane
plantations and the Queimada government to chase José Dolores who is
disturbing the sugar cane interests of England with his army of rebels. Written
by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil...
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As the Japanese economy reels from the combined effects of the recent
tsunami and human-made nuclear disaster, Japanese workers are facing increased
repression as they attempt to fight back against the economic effects of the
calamity and expose the nuclear industry for the danger it poses....
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The U.S./NATO war against Libya’s people and government reveals every day that there is no such thing as a humanitarian war carried out by imperialist states against post-colonial countries....
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Poor and working people in Japan, the U.S. and around the world are the ones
paying for these nuclear plants, paying the costs of disaster and also
guaranteeing the profits of the relatively small handful of people who own
them. The workers at the plant, the community around them and the people in
general should be the ones to make the decisions to shut down plants at
immediate risk and demand protection from GE and other nuclear power giants, as
well as accountability and reparations for the damages these corporations have
already caused....
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The hearts of workers and the oppressed of the world go out to the Japanese
people who have been hit by an earthquake and tsunami and are now threatened
with nuclear disaster. We can never forget that more than 200,000 people,
almost all civilians, were murdered by U.S. nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in
1945, while millions suffered from radiation poisoning, cancer and birth
defects in the following decades....
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A leading U.S. scientist who deals with global warming and climate change is calling the People’s Republic of China “the best hope” for turning around a looming disaster for the world and “stopping rule by fossil fuel interests.”...
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With the close of the most recent round of climate talks in Tianjin, China,
which took place during the first week of October, the world is gearing up for
the next major talks in Cancún, Mexico, to begin in late November. The
Tianjin talks, with delegates from more than 150 countries, produced very
little progress, as the fundamental divide between the desires of rich
countries and the needs of poor ones was not resolved....
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Much of the focus on the rapid expansion of natural gas extraction through
hydrofracturing, or “fracking,” has centered on methane leaks and
chemical contamination of residential water wells. In Dimock, Pa., more than 15
residents sued Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., charging permanent damage to their
wells....
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Even in a time of global climate change, the immense suffering of the Pakistani people due to vast floods did not have to happen. Investment in infrastructure and a timely emergency response program could have minimized what has become one of the world's worst disasters. But decades of U.S. intervention to keep corrupt and reactionary military regimes in power against the will of the people have left this country one of the poorest and least developed in the region....
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On June 25 more than 300 people attending the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit took part in a People’s Movement Assembly organized around global ecological justice and environmental racism. ...
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Potentially toxic and carcinogenic chemicals are used in the hydraulic
fracturing process to obtain natural gas from shale. Whenever industry
officials are confronted with concerns regarding their use, their standard
answer is, “The chemicals account for less than 1 percent of the fluid
that is blasted underground.”...
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The climate change we are living is not any crisis, it is a global alert about the way toward self destruction
that the powerful have chosen, given the lack of equitable possibilities that
the world need in order to survive –the indigenous peoples, the social
groups living in poverty, women,the elderly and children are the
most affected by it in today’s world....
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Join us for an in-depth dialogue on the current state of climate change
negotiations from a global perspective that will identify the way forward for
climate justice. Topics will include a comparison between the Copenhagen
Accord, the recently reviewed text of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term
Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) and significant Bolivian submissions to the UNFCCC
(UN Framework Convention on Climate Change). The issue of "Putting U.S.
Militarism Back into the Climate Change Calculations" will also be
addressed....
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As millions of gallons of crude oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico, the owner of the collapsed oil rig that caused the disaster is trying desperately to elude responsibility for what has already cost the lives of 11 workers and threatens to become the worst oil catastrophe in U.S. history....
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I had the opportunity to attend the April 20-22 World People’s
Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba,
Bolivia, where people from all over the world initiated a discussion about
finding real solutions to the climate crisis. During this conference, I
attended an April 21 workshop called “Taking action against corporations
that damage the climate,” which brought up the Water Wars against Bechtel
Corporation....
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Thirty thousand people convened at the World People’s Conference on
Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The
conference, which took place from April 19-22, hosted people from more than 135
countries and 90 official state representatives. Climate activists, community
organizers, artists, musicians, scholars and workers from around the world
joined forces over the common goal of finding an effective and practical
solution to the climate crisis — a task that the rich, ruling countries
of the world proved, at the Copenhagen Climate Summit, that they are incapable
of accomplishing....
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While a group of workers held an 18-day occupation at Vestas wind turbine
plant on Great Britain’s Isle of Wight in July, other Vestas workers and
their supporters erected an encampment outside the plant. On Nov. 27 this tent
community — which after four months included such comforts as a kitchen,
showers, furniture and a solar-powered laptop/cell phone charging station!
— was disbanded when Vestas obtained a court eviction order. Campers,
however, were hardly demoralized....
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The youth are more interested than anyone else in
the future. Until very recently, the discussion revolved around the kind of
society we would have. Today, the discussion centers on whether human society
will survive....
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African countries at the COP-15 climate change summit in Copenhagen led a
walkout for several hours on Dec. 14 to protest the efforts of the United
States, Britain and other imperialist countries and their allies to sidestep
responsibility for the worsening impact of carbon dioxide emissions. The
increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has caused
climate change that threatens the total collapse of agricultural production on
the African continent....
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The International Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which was two
years in the planning, ended in a train wreck. Nothing was arrived at: no
treaty, no deadlines, no binding agreement of any sort....
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NEWS arriving from the Danish capital paints a picture of chaos. After
planning an event in which around 40,000 people were to participate, the hosts
have no way of keeping their promise. Evo, who was the first of the ALBA
presidents to arrive there, expressed certain profound truths emanating from
the millenary culture of his people....
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I have been reading some of the slogans painted on the streets, and I think
those slogans of these youngsters, some of which I heard when I was young, and
of the young woman there, two of which I noted. You can hear among others, two
powerful slogans. One: Don’t change the climate, change the system....
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The International Action Center stands in solidarity with the thousands of
activists from across the globe who are protesting at the UN Climate Change
Conference in Copenhagen. We condemn the acts of police brutality, including
use of chemical weapons and the preemptive arrests of more than 1,000 people.
We demand the release of all who have been arrested....
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In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more
than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of
state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to
ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other
toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or
proposed restrictions?...
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