Environment
Environment
How Agro-Chemical Giant Monsanto Has Been Destroying Environment, Human Lives for Decades
teleSur: In 1995, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, listed Monsanto among the top 5 lethal corporations dumping toxic waste, as it was recorded dumping nearly 37 million tons of toxic waste, through air, water, and land. ... Monsanto expanded into the market of toxic agro-chemical products in the years between 1944 and 1957, as it manufactured Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane, DDT, a toxic insecticide, which was sprayed across fields and farms throughout the United States ... DDT’s use significantly impacted the bird populations by making their eggs paper thin. ... Roundup, one of Monsanto's most recent destructive agro-chemical, was introduced in the markets in the 1990s, which contains a deadly chemical, Glyphosate. ... Another survey in 2016 revealed that 93 percent of U.S. citizens tested had glyphosate in their urine, which the World Health Organization’s Cancer Agency, in 2017 labeled "carcinogenic.”...
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Apr 24, 2018, 2:48pm
Environment
One in eight bird species is threatened with extinction, global study finds
Patrick Barkham, The Guardian, UK: One in eight bird species is threatened with global extinction, and once widespread creatures such as the puffin, snowy owl and turtle dove are plummeting towards oblivion, according to the definitive study of global bird populations. ... The State of the World’s Birds, a five-year compendium of population data from the best-studied group of animals on the planet, reveals a biodiversity crisis driven by the expansion and intensification of agriculture. ... In all, 74% of 1,469 globally threatened birds are affected primarily by farming. Logging, invasive species and hunting are the other main threats...
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Apr 23, 2018, 2:43pm
Environment
Parents Didn’t Want Fracking Near Their School. So the Oil Company Chose a Poorer School, Instead.
Megan Jula: The first school was 77-percent white. The second is 87-percent students of color. ... In one of the most fracked counties in the country, a fight is underway between environmental justice advocates and the Colorado commission that oversees oil and gas development. Four environmental and civil rights groups are suing the commission for allowing a company to build 24 oil and gas wells by a public school in a low-income area—after the same company tossed its original plans to build near a charter school serving mostly white, middle-class families. ... Extraction aims to complete the project in 2019 and has already begun surface-level construction on the site. Earlier this month, the plaintiffs asked for a temporary restraining order on construction. But the judge quickly denied the order and indicated he would soon be ruling for the COGCC...
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Apr 17, 2018, 4:57pm
Environment
Global Shipping in 'Historic' Climate Deal
David Shukman, BBC News: The global shipping industry has for the first time agreed to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases. ... Shippings has previously been excluded from climate agreements, but under the deal, emissions will be reduced by 50% by 2050 compared to 2008 levels. ... The move will send a signal through the industry that rapid innovation is now needed. ... Ships may have to operate more slowly to burn less fuel. New designs for vessels will be more streamlined and engines will have to be cleaner, maybe powered by hydrogen or batteries, or even by the wind...
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Apr 16, 2018, 12:53pm
Environment
Nukes of Hazard
Nathanael Johnson: When it comes to nuclear power, the risks appear right from the beginning of the process with uranium mining. And they continue to pop up throughout the nuclear life cycle, from enrichment and reactor operation to the radioactive waste at the end. It’s a process fraught with hazards. ... The federal government has fairly sophisticated clean-up plans, but politicians have refused to provide the money needed to carry them out ... In the past, policymakers weighed the risks and doled them out in a way that fell disproportionately on the Navajo and other communities of color. ... In the future, nuclear plants will only succeed when communities weigh the risks for themselves, and decide they want them...
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Apr 13, 2018, 3:29pm
Environment
Environmental Group Plans Methane-Tracking Satellite
Christopher Joyce: An environmental organization has unveiled plans to monitor a potent greenhouse gas from space. ... The Environmental Defense Fund says it will launch a satellite to monitor methane with unprecedented precision. ... Steven Hamburg, a climate scientist at EDF, says methane has many times the warming "potential" as the other more abundant greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. ... "Methane is such a potent greenhouse gas," he says. "The gas actually accounts for more than one quarter of the additional warming that we experience today." ... Methane leaks from oil and gas operations. Farms also generate methane as do natural wetlands...
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Apr 12, 2018, 2:25pm
Environment
The Bayer-Monsanto Merger Is Bad News for the Planet
Ellen Brown: Bayer and Monsanto have a long history of collusion to poison the ecosystem for profit. ... Two new studies from Europe have found that the number of farm birds in France has crashed by a third in just 15 years, with some species being almost eradicated. The collapse in the bird population mirrors the discovery last October that over three quarters of all flying insects in Germany have vanished in just three decades. Insects are the staple food source of birds, the pollinators of fruits, and the aerators of the soil. ... The chief suspect in this mass extinction is the aggressive use of neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly imidacloprid and clothianidin, both made by German-based chemical giant Bayer. These pesticides, along with toxic glyphosate herbicides (Roundup), have delivered a one-two punch against Monarch butterflies, honeybees and birds...
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Apr 10, 2018, 3:30pm
Environment
Fukushima Jitters
Robert Hunziker: Fukushima is full of nasty surprises ... It’s an on-going horror show that just won’t quit. ... Only recently, a team of international researchers, including a group of scientists from the University of Manchester/UK and Kyushu University/Japan made a startling discovery. Within the nuclear exclusion zone in paddy soils and at an aquaculture center located several miles from the nuclear plant, the research team found cesium-rich micro-particles. ... Evidently, the radioactive debris was blown into the environment during the initial meltdowns and accompanying hydrogen blasts. ... Their discovery dispels the long-held view that the initial explosion only emitted gaseous radionuclides. Now, it is clear that solid particles with very long-lived radionuclides were emitted...
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Apr 2, 2018, 3:33pm
Environment
Oil and gas drilling blamed for sinkholes threatening to swallow parts of Texas
Josh Gabbatiss, The Independent, UK: 'The ground movement we’re seeing is not normal,' say scientists ... “This region of Texas has been punctured like a pin cushion with oil wells and injection wells since the 1940s and our findings associate that activity with ground movement,” ... In their study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers demonstrated significant ground movement across a 4000-square-mile area of Texas. ... Combining their imagery with oil well data for the region allowed the scientists to conclude that this unstable ground was associated with decades of fossil fuel extraction...
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Mar 31, 2018, 12:02pm
Environment
Insect Decimation Upstages Global Warming
Robert Hunziker: The worldwide loss of insects is simply staggering with some reports of 75% up to 90%, happening much faster than the paleoclimate record rate of the past five major extinction events. It is possible that some insect species may already be close to total extinction! ... Several naturalists and environmental writers believe the massive loss of insects has everything to do with three generations of industrialized farming and the vast tide of poisons pouring over the landscape year-after-year, especially since the end of WWII. Ours is the first-ever pesticide-based agricultural society. ... Insects are basic to thousands of food chains; for example, the disappearance of Britain’s farmland birds by over 50% in 40 years...
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Mar 27, 2018, 11:56am
Environment
Tribes Build a Traditional Watch House to Stop Kinder Morgan Pipeline Expansion
Janice Cantieri: At Kwekwecnewtxw, or “a place to watch from,” in Burnaby, B.C., tribal elders are holding ceremonies and keeping watch over the construction of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Volunteers began construction of Kwekwecnewtxw, a traditional cedar watch house, on Saturday, March 10. It is the gathering point of Protect the Inlet, a new campaign launched to stop the pipeline. ... Protect the Inlet is a part of growing indigenous-led efforts to stop construction of the Trans Mountain expansion. Efforts like the recent construction of the watch house build on ongoing work to place tiny houses in the path of the pipeline. These acts of resistance are rooted in traditional cultural values, and they’re also providing benefits for people who would be negatively impacted by the project...
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Mar 15, 2018, 4:25pm
Environment
Fukushima: A Human-Made Disaster Brought on by Bad Faith
John Laforge: Fukushima’s endless radiation effects — from thyroid cancers, to contaminated sea food, from poisoned pregnancies to irradiated clean-up workers — should be the final insult from nuclear power and weapons. And they will be if the general public wises up to the unacceptable risks of continuing to operate nuclear reactors. ... In a nutshell, two principle government and corporate lies demonstrate how bad faith brought about the worst reactor accident in history. ... Initially the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) asserted over and over that “there is no crisis” and even that “there will be no radiation release.” ... The other glaring example of bad faith has been Tepco’s repeatedly saying, “We could not imagine that a once-in-a-thousand-years earthquake might come,” and further that “the tsunami was beyond our expectation.” These are lies...
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Mar 10, 2018, 11:06am
Environment
Monsanto Concealed Effects of Toxic Chemical for Decades, Ohio AG Alleges
Tim Stelloh: Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine sued agricultural giant Monsanto on Monday, alleging the company concealed dangers posed by a toxic chemical compound it manufactured for nearly a half century. ... In the suit, filed in the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court in Cincinnati, prosecutors argued that the company should pay for the clean-up of what it says are dozens of rivers, lakes and other water bodies contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. ... The suit alleges that Monsanto learned of PCBs’ toxic effects in the 1930s, yet it kept producing the compound while concealing its effects. ... The suit claims the company acknowledged that prolonged exposure could produce "systemic toxic effects" in an internal memo in 1937, so it undertook a "decades-long campaign of misinformation and deception." ...
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Mar 8, 2018, 10:22am
Environment
The Colorado Gas Wars: Where Things Fall Apart, for There is No Center
Phil Doe: Things stay mostly the same in Colorado, where climate change doesn’t exist in the minds of many politicians and some captains of industry. The marvels of fracking are a constant. Wells explode with regularity; each week thousands of barrels of toxic liquids from hydraulic fracturing are injected into the bowels of the earth for ‘safe keeping’; gasses, some of them threatening to all life, drift down from the oil patch in rural Weld County to create ozone and other air problems for the state’s urban population; frackers with massive drilling paraphernalia invade neighborhoods with impunity–and the political elite proclaim fracking safe and necessary to the economy...
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Mar 2, 2018, 3:01pm
Environment
We Are Drowning In Plastic, and Fracking Companies Are Profiting
Wenonah Hauter: Plastic production wreaks havoc on people and the planet—from fracking wells and pipelines in Pennsylvania, to air pollution from plastic plants in Scotland. ... We are choking the planet in plastic. ... But what’s less well-known is what is fueling this plastics binge: fracking. ... The company (Ineos in the UK) uses the liquid gas found in the shale formations there (in Pennsylvania and Ohio) to feed its chemical plants. To meet this demand, the company recently built a fleet of so-called “dragon ships” to carry volatile gas liquids across the Atlantic ... Expanding this business will require new pipelines like the Mariner East 2, now under construction across Pennsylvania....
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Feb 17, 2018, 10:58am
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