In Canada, officials keep close watch on environmental activists
Travis Lupick, AlJazeera
On July 16, James McIntyre, 48, was shot and killed by police outside a public meeting about a proposed hydroelectric dam in Dawson Creek, a small town in northeastern British Columbia. The dam, called Site C, is controversial among environmentalists and First Nations people, and the night McIntyre was shot, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were responding to reports that a protester was disrupting the meeting…
According to Sean Devlin, an activist who has spent the last two years working on a documentary about Canadian government surveillance, both the shooting and Blaney’s remarks are consistent with a larger government crackdown on environmental activists. “They are using violence to intimidate those who oppose [projects like the Site C Dam],” Devlin said, adding that what the country’s conservative government tolerates as legitimate dissent is shrinking.
Nowhere is this tension felt more acutely than in British Columbia, where the province’s premier, Christy Clark, has staked her legacy on transforming the region into a global hub for liquefied natural gas. In addition to megaprojects like the Site C dam, two pipelines are under discussion that would carry massive amounts of heavy crude from the Athabasca oil sands in central Alberta to the coast of British Columbia. The scramble for natural resources has turned Canada’s westernmost province into a battleground for conservationists, and First Nations people have led the way in fighting these efforts…
CO2 removal cannot save the oceans – if we pursue business as usual
Mathesius, S., Hofmann, M., Caldeira, K., Schellnhuber, H. J., Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities do not only cause rapid warming of the seas, but also ocean acidification at an unprecedented rate. Artificial carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere has been proposed to reduce both risks to marine life. A new study based on computer calculations now shows that this strategy would not work if applied too late. CDR cannot compensate for soaring business-as-usual emissions throughout the century and beyond, even if the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration would be restored to pre-industrial levels at some point in the future. This is due to the tremendous inertia of the ocean system. Thus, CDR cannot substitute timely emissions reductions, yet may play a role as a supporting actor in the climate drama…
‘We woke up in a desert’ – the water crisis taking hold across Egypt
Mohamed Ezz and Nada Arafat for Mada Masr, The Guardian
UN says the country will face ‘absolute water scarcity’ by 2025, but for some villages the catastrophe has already arrived – as the Middle East faces severe heatwave…
Even The Saudis Need To Borrow To Survive Oil Price Slump
Charles Kennedy, Oilprice.com
The collapse in oil prices is draining the Arab Gulf countries of much needed revenue.
To be sure, the major oil producers in the Persian Gulf are not exactly facing a fiscal crisis in the way that some weaker oil producing countries are, such as Venezuela or even Russia, but they are still hurting as revenues decline.
In fact, even the world’s most important oil producer is struggling. Saudi Arabia plans to raise $27 billion by the end of 2015 from the bond markets, a sign that low oil prices are draining government coffers. Even though Saudi Arabia has a massive stash of foreign exchange and can produce oil more cheaply than almost anywhere on Earth, the fall of oil prices by more than half since last year is still taking its toll…
Britain’s secret ties to governments, firms behind ISIS oil sales
Nafeez Ahmed, Insurge Intelligence
In the scramble to access Kurdistan’s oil and gas wealth, the US and UK are turning a blind eye to complicity in ‘Islamic State’ oil smuggling
Key allies in the US and UK led war on Islamic State (ISIS) are covertly financing the terrorist movement according to senior political sources in the region. US and British oil companies are heavily invested in the murky geopolitical triangle sustaining ISIS’ black market oil sales.
The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq and Turkish military intelligence have both supported secret ISIS oil smuggling operations and even supplied arms to the terror group, according to Kurdish, Iraqi and Turkish officials.
One British oil company in particular, Genel Energy, is contracted by the KRG to supply oil for a major Kurdish firm accused of facilitating ISIS oil sales to Turkey. The Kurdish firm has close ties to the Iraqi Kurdish government…
Debate: The case for slower growth
Adam Posen, Tim Jackson, The Economist
If the rich world aimed for minimal growth, would it be a disaster or a blessing?
It would be a disaster: Adam Posen…
It would be a blessing: Tim Jackson…
Jimmy Carter: The U.S. Is an “Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery”
Jon Schwarz, The Intercept
Former president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday on the nationally syndicated radio show the Thom Hartmann Program that the United States is now an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” has created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” Both Democrats and Republicans, Carter said, “look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.”
Carter was responding to a question from Hartmann about recent Supreme Court decisions on campaign financing like Citizens United…
‘Everyone associates the dumps with death’: the Kyrgyz town built on nuclear waste
David Trilling in Mailuu-Suu for EurasiaNet, The Guardian
Residents of Mailuu-Suu, one of the most polluted places on the planet, complain that officials are doing little to protect them from health hazards. EurasiaNet reports
On the ground floor of Mailuu-Suu’s central hospital, pharmacist Ainagul Parpibaeva says she’s had enough.
“We’re full of illness. Many people have cancer, leukaemia. I think this is because of the uranium, but the government never tells us anything,” she says. People continuously come to her complaining of the same symptoms over and over, “like children who are nauseous and vomit”, she explains…
Environment agency warns of growing traffic problem in Germany
Deutsche Welle
Germany’s Federal Environment Agency says cars and trucks on the country’s roads are still a major source of greenhouse gases. A new report shows transport is the only sector where emissions are continuing to rise…
Review of Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic
Fred Magdoff, Climate and Capitalism
Over the past few decades there has been a rapid growth of interest in buying food that doesn’t come from large-scale industrial farms, with their use of copious amounts of commercial fertilizers, pesticides, and GMOs, and its inhumane treatment of farm animals.
In addition, people have become aware of the poor working conditions—sometimes clearly inhumane— in large agribusiness ventures in vegetable fields, fruit orchards, and slaughterhouses.
The interest in alternatives to industrial agriculture is indicated by the incredible growth of purchases of organic food, the large increase in numbers of farmers markets around the country, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms, direct sale from local farms to restaurants and, more recently, to schools…
A few books, such as Alison Hope Alkon’s Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability bring attention to the lack of social justice in the food system. This ranges from outright mistreatment of farm and other agribusiness labor to the unavailability of nutritious food to the poor because of price or living in what has been called a “food desert”—when people live in a community that lacks nearby stores that carry fresh fruits and vegetables as well as other healthy alternatives to junk food.
An important contribution to the discussion of alternatives to the conventional food system is Margaret Gray’s Labor and the Locavore, with its specific focus on the condition of laborers that work on the medium and small farms in the Hudson Valley of New York State, mainly raising fruits and vegetables, not far north of New York City. Buying local, usually from small to medium size farms, has been encouraged as a way to ensure that the food is fresh and, because of easy contact with the farmers growing the food, and it is easy to find out whether the farm practices used are consistent with one’s desires…
Living With The Land Part 3 – Building Soil with Regenerative Agriculture
Permaculture People, Permaculture Magazine
Sitting on top the hills of southwest Devon overlooking the sea, Village Farm is a living example of regenerative agriculture.
A little over a year ago, Rebecca Hosking and business partner Tim Green – who made the BBC2 documentary ‘A Farm for The Future’ – became tenants of 175 acres of exhausted, ploughed out soils.
Turning a windswept, misused, coastal farm into an abundant landscape working with nature is their goal; their approach – holistic planned grazing…
The Ungentrifiers
Brendan O’Connor, The Awl
Hiding affordable apartments from a ravenous market.
The New York City Community Land Initiative (NYCCLI; pronounced “nicely”) is an alliance of organizations, led primarily by the New Economy Project and Picture the Homeless, that is working to establish community land trusts and mutual housing associations throughout the city, beginning in East Harlem—a desirable neighborhood for developers that also has a relatively high proportion of vacant plots and residential buildings that the city has acquired by tax lien. “Some of these buildings have a lot of untapped resources. We think that if they were given the support that they need from a community land trust and a mutual housing association, other buildings that may be doing well, that they could be brought up to be in much better shape, essentially,” Monica Garcia, of the New Economy Project, told me. “Really the idea is that if these buildings come together and at least some of them form this large scale co-op or a mutual housing association that they can create economies of scale, that they can cross-subsidize.” She emphasized, “The idea is that we want to take this housing out of the real estate market indefinitely.”…
Cli-Fi 2015
Greg Dalton, Climate One
Climate change is more than a plot device – it’s our reality, and thesigns are all around us. Can Cli-Fi help rally the troops in our battle to save the planet?
Jason Mark, Editor, Earth Island Journal
Kim Stanley Robinson, Author, 2312 (Thorndike Press, 2015)
