disaster – 350orbust

This Earth Day, Let’s Focus On Saving Humans

April 22, 2013 by Christine

It’s a snowy and cold Earth Day morning in northwestern Ontario. On this Earth Day, Joe Romm over at Think Progress muses about renaming Earth Day – after all, it’s really humans and our civilization that is in peril at this point by our feckless, reckless and cavalier treatment of the ecosystem that gives us life.

Gaia, this amazing planet, has survived mass extinction events before – five other ones before this sixth one, that humans are on the verge of causing:

The culprits for the biodiversity loss include climate change, habitat loss, pollution and overfishing, the researchers wrote.

“Most of the mechanisms that are occurring today, most of them are caused by us,” Ferrer said.

So can we fix it? Yes, there’s time to cut dependence on fossil fuels, alleviate climate change and commit to conservation of habitat, the study scientists say. The more pressing question is, will we?

Barnosky and Ferrer both say they’re optimistic that people will pull together to solve the problem once they understand the magnitude of the looming disaster. Jablonski puts himself into the “guardedly optimistic category.”

“I think a lot of the problems probably have a lot more to do with politics than with science,” Jablonski said. (Read the full article on LiveScience.com)

Wondering where we’re at with climate change on Earth Day 2013? 350.org has just released “Do The Math – the Movie”, and that’s how my family and I spent 45 minutes of our Earth Night yesterday. It was as inspiring to watch the movie as it was to see Bill McKibben live in Seattle when the Do The Math tour launched last November. If you’re wondering whether or not we can still make a difference at this late stage of the game, when we’re already feeling the effects of a destabilized climate, please take the time to watch it. If you’re feeling confused about the whole climate debate, and are wondering how to make sense of the science, as well as the accusations that the scientists raising the warning about climate change are “in it for the money”, please take the time to watch this movie. If you have children and/or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews that you care about, please take the time to watch this movie. If you are alive on planet earth at this moment in history, please take the time to watch this movie!

[youtube=http://youtu.be/IsIfokifwSo]

Get outside and spend some time with Mother Earth on this Earth Day!

Trick, Not Treat, For Canadians: Harper’s Scary Canada-China Trade Deal

October 31, 2012 by Christine

It’s All Hallows’ Eve, the time that creatures of darkness are said to come out and haunt humans. That is certainly true in Ottawa today, as Stephen Harper and his minions stir up a cauldron of trouble for Canadians by fast-tracking their Canada-China investment treaty. FIPA or FIPPA (Foreign Investment Promotion Protection Act) is set to become ratified today. If you are Canadian, FIPA – which is set to be passed by the Harper government without any debate in the House of Commons or scrutiny by the public – should be on the top of your scary list, too. If you’re from China, well then you should be very very pleased:

The Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPPA or FIPA) is the most startling trade deal to be put before Canadians in more than a generation. Actually, that’s not quite right… The deal has NOT been put before Canadians. The Conservative government is actively avoiding debate and discussion on the deal, and are instead rushing towards ratification without anything resembling a sober second look.

This trade deal has the potential to permanently alter the course of Canada’s economic and environmental security. It’s set to pass in less than a week. Time is not on our side. We need to push our politicians to put the brakes on this deal, and to closely examine it with Canada’s best interest in mind.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/52360929]

Go to LeadNow.ca to learn more. Right now you can donate to Lead Now to help them place ads right in the Conservative heartland about Harper’s Halloween trick.

Also on my very scary list, as always, is the incredible capacity for humans to ignore and/or deny the impact of our dirty energy system on the climate, and on our children’s future health and happiness.

George Lakoff, author of “Don’t Think of An Elephant!”, has a good piece on his blog on the language to use to make the connection between Hurricane Sandy and climate change, Global Warming Systemically Caused Hurricane Sandy.

Also, Hurricane Sandy hit Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and The Dominican Republic on the way to the U.S., creating chaos and killing more people than in North America. Read more on FirstPost.com

And lastly, here’s an image that speaks for itself. Happy Halloween, folks.

scary gay marriage — Image: BewareofImages.com

BP Is Creepy: NRDC Issues Damning Water Quality Report on Gulf Beaches One Year After Oil Disaster

July 2, 2011 by CPP

The NRDC released its annual “Testing the Waters: A Guide To Water Quality At Vacation Beaches” report last week, which included a special section dedicated to oil-related closures, advisories and notices in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP oil disaster last year. The report said, in part:

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and sparking the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Over the course of two months, approximately 170 million gallons of oil and 200,000 metric tons of methane gas gushed into Gulf waters, affecting approximately 1,000 miles of shoreline.1 More than a year later, a sorry legacy of enduring damage, people wronged, and a region scarred remains. As of the end of January, 83 miles of shoreline remained heavily or moderately oiled, and tar balls and weathered oil continue to wash ashore.

America’s favorite “Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet”, The Kinsey Sicks, have come out with their own more satirical take on BP in this video, BP Is Creepy:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C90DVNVORw&NR=1&feature=fvwp]

*thanks to Cheryl McNamara for sharing this link*

More links:

NRDC’s Report, Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality At Vacation Beaches

BP Finds Success In Report About Its Failure

The Kinsey Sicks

Take Time To Renew Your Spirit

June 19, 2011 by CPP

There are so many societies in which the elite made decisions that were good for themselves in the short run and ruined themselves and societies in the long run….

Similarly, in the United States at present, the policies being pursued by too many wealthy people and decision makers are ones that — as in the case of the Mayan kings — preserve their interests in the short run but are disastrous in the long run.

~Jared Diamond, author of “Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed”

quoted in Climate Progress

Nature’s Might On Display in Japan: Humans Ignore It At Our Peril

March 14, 2011 by CPP

Much of the world’s attention, and thoughts and prayers, are focused on the people of Japan, who are suffering from the deadly effects of last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami, and are now facing a nuclear emergency. The devastation to one of the world’s most industrialized countries is unbelievable, yet it is undeniable. It is clear that the death toll will be much higher than the current official one of 2,800. The survivors are struggling to deal with lack of food and clean water, and the loss of their shelter.

Many of us living in the industrialized world of the 21st century feel that we are we are separate from our environment. Many of us believe that “environmental” issues like water pollution, ocean acidification, and climate change are issues that we can choose to ignore without any consequence to ourselves or our families. We don’t realize that what we do to our surroundings, we also do to ourselves. We, in our hubris, have also come to feel that we are in control of nature, not the other way around. That is the only explanation for our unabated abuse of the gift of fossil fuels, and our ongoing pollution of our water and air. If we are going to have a future without ever-increasing pictures on our t.v. screens like what we saw from Japan this weekend, and Australia in January, and Bangladesh last August, we need to all agree that what we do to our environment, we do to ourselves, and to our children and their children. Because, of course, it will eventually be us and our communities who are featured in the news headlines.

Derrick Jensen offers a different way of approaching environmental accountability, in a recent article in Orion magazine entitled “Age of Ooops”, where he proposes that environmental risks should be considered through the lens of the precautionary principle:

The solution I dreamed up to this lack of accountability is a robustly enforced legislative version of the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle suggests that if an action, or policy, has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, the burden of proof that this action is not harmful falls on those proposing to take the action. They can’t act if they can’t prove no harm will come. So, for example, instead of presuming that deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is safe, and only suspending drilling when there is proof of harm, we should presume that this action is harmful until it has been proven otherwise. The same logic should apply to the emission of greenhouse gases. In fact, there are thousands of examples of harmful actions that would be stopped by any reasonable application of the precautionary principle.

Click here to read the full article. (thanks to Curtis for sending it my way).

More links:

Japanese Disaster Teams Search For Bodies

Nuclear Plants Threatened by Earthquake

Japan Nuclear Plant Rocked By Second Blast

Japan’s Chernobyl: Fukishama Marks the End of the Nuclear Era

Fire and Ice: Melting Glaciers Trigger Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes

What Will It Take For Us to Say “NO” to Corporate Environmental Disasters?

October 8, 2010 by Christine

Do we really want corporations calling the shots, dictating government policy for the rest of us? Last January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that corporations are persons, entitled by the Constitution to buy elections and run the government. Every year, globally, Big Oil gets $500 billion dollars a year of our (taxpayer’s) money, to encourage us to keep digging up old buried dead things, at great risk to people and the environment as evidenced most recently by the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and Canada’s toxic tar sands, and of course climate change. Those same corporations make billions of dollars in profits from selling us all that oil, and use that money to muddy the public debate on climate change, about which there is scientific certainty – the only question that climate scientists debate is how fast the “tipping point” into catastrophic global climate instability is going to occur.

This week, we have the pictures out of Hungary as a mile-wide tidal wave of toxic sludge from an aluminium factory reaches the Danube river, one of Europe’s key waterways and the source of drinking water for many. At least four people were killed and three are missing, and over 120 have been hospitalized, after the unstoppable torrent inundated homes, swept cars off roads, burned people through their clothes and emptied 35 million cubic feet of toxic waste onto several nearby towns. USA Today reports:

Meanwhile, residents wearing pants coated with red mud cleared the muck away from their homes with snow shovels.

Kati Holtzer said the sludge smashed through the door of her home in Kolontar and trapped her and her 3-year-old boy in a churning flood of acrid waste.

She saved her son by placing him on a sofa that was floating in the muck. She called her husband, Balazs, who was working in Austria, to say goodbye.

“We’re going to die,” she told him, chest-deep in sludge.

We all need to take responsibility for demanding more stringent environmental standards, whether in Hungary or in the Alberta tar sands. There are other ways of doing business – let’s vote with our pocketbooks as well as our ballots, and demand change. We need jobs, but not at the cost of our future, and that of our children. As Franke James puts it, “Maybe the truth is without a healthy environment, there is no economy.”

This video shows how fast, and overwhelming, the toxic wave was as the reservoir holding in the waste burst. This was a farming community, but experts are saying there is little chance that farming can be resumed because of the permanent change in soil PH, as well as chemicals left behind by the deluge.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEMWh6EjJoY]

The BP Catastrophe is Not Just A Spill, But a Spoiling of God’s Creation

July 11, 2010 by Christine

Language fails us. This is not a “spill,” but a spoiling of God’s creation — of wetlands and beaches; of God’s myriad creatures; of lives and livelihoods. And we heard many testimonies of this devastation over these last few days. The words that kept coming to my mind were “reflection, restoration, and renewal.”

~ Excerpted from “Praying on the Gulf Coast“,

by Jim Wallis on God’s Politics Blog, Sojourners

pelican wading through BP oil washed up in rookery, Barataria Bay, Louisiana — photo by Georgianne Nienaber

Globs of Oil on Louisiana coast.Lois Nickel — photo by Lois Nickel

“Hole In the Ocean”

June 17, 2010 by Christine

“Hole in the Ocean” was written written by Joe Monto & Steve Bartlett to keep the focus on the BP oil spill disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. This is already the largest environmental disaster in United States history, and the oil is still gushing out of the oil well.

The song is dedicated to the 11 men who lost their lives on the Deepwater Oil Rig on April 20th, 2010.

The words to ” Hole In The Ocean” are:

The wave crests on fire
And storm clouds below
The oozing dark monster

Creeps silently slow
The heartache of many
The future unclear
We stand on the shoreline
Surrounded by fear

Chorus:

There’s a hole in the ocean
That’s breaking my heart
When will it end
Why did it start?

Can we ever return
To our blue watered bay
There’s a hole in the ocean
That stands in our way

2nd Verse:

For the diving birds diving
And the fish ‘neath the waves
There is so much to do
There is so much to save

With bitter tears stinging
For the ones who were lost
Is there really a way
To assess what this cost?

Bridge:

Eleven souls sailing
That April day
It happened so quickly
‘Twas no time to pray

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtIWvkDvVUM]

Click here to send a message to President Obama to ban offshore drilling permanently.

Click here to find out how BP is quietly breaking ground on a controversial project in B.C.’s Rocky Mountains without a provincial environmental review.

Big Oil’s Big Mess in the Gulf of Mexico: “America’s Chernobyl”

May 2, 2010 by Christine

It looks like it is going to be a catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. What’s unfolding right now is not an oil “spill”, it’s an unchecked gush of oil – oil pouring out at a rate we now know is at least 5 times, and may be 10 times, what BP originally announced. Time.com put it this way:

It may be time to stop referring to the Deepwater Horizon rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico as an oil spill. A spill sounds like something temporary, a glass of milk overturned, which empties and then can be cleaned up. But what is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the sensitive shorelines of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, isn’t a spill. It’s an unchecked gush of crude oil from beneath the bottom of the ocean into the water — and no one can say for sure when it will finally stop.

From the Louie Miller, Director of Mississippi branch of the Sierra Club:

… BP, the world’s third largest energy company formerly known as British Petroleum, has mishandled the crisis ever since an oil rig the company was managing exploded April 20 off the Louisiana Coast and sank two days later.

“I don’t think I’m overstating the case by saying this is America’s Chernobyl at this point in time,” Miller said at a news conference today in Gulfport.

“This is going to destroy Mississippi and the Gulf Coast as we know it – from property values … to our barrier islands. It’s a big deal, you all. And unfortunately, we do not see the response that we have asked for.”

Oil Spill Facts:

The oil spill exceeds the worst-case scenario predicted by BP when it filed its exploration plan with the government. The spill is estimated at roughly 210,000 gallons a day. In BP’s exploration plan, the company outlined a worst-case scenario of 162,000 gallons a day.
The disaster may have been prevented by a special shut-off switch, but BP did not purchase the switch and after drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling, decided the device wasn’t needed. [Wall St. Journal 4/30/2010]
At its current rate, the spill could surpass by next week the size of the 1969 Santa Barbara spill that helped lead to the far-reaching moratorium on oil and gas drilling off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts
Some estimates show it could take 3-4 months to contain the spill. By that time, the spill could exceed the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
59 Fatalities, More Than 1,300 Injuries, 853 Fires. There have been nearly 60 casualties and more than 1,300 injuries on the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico alone since 2001. “Working in the oil industry is more dangerous than working in coal mines.” [CBS, 4/22/2010]

BP Facts:

$5.6 Billion In Profits. During the first quarter of 2010, “BP said its profit rose to $6.08 billion from $2.56 billion during the same period of 2009. Excluding the impact of energy prices on unsold inventories as well as $49 million of one-time items, and BP would have earned $5.65 billion, topping consensus estimates by about $900 million.” Profits increased 135% from 2009. [Bloomberg, 4/27/2010]
41% Raise For BP’s CEO. “Chief Executive Tony Hayward’s total remuneration and share awards rose 41% in 2009 on performance bonuses from improved operations which made the company one of the best performing oil majors in the fourth quarter, despite lower full-year profits due to the fall in the oil price.” [Wall Street Journal, 3/5/2010]
$16 Million In Lobbying. BP spent $16 million lobbying in 2009. [Opensecrets]
$3 Billion In The World’s Dirtiest Oil. Meanwhile the company invested $3 billion in 2007 in the dirtiest source of oil on earth: Canadian tar sands. “The result will be the development of a major new Canadian oil field and the modernization and expansion of the Toledo refinery to allow far greater use of Canadian heavy oil and to increase clean fuels production by as much as 600,000 gallons a day.” [Climate Progress, 12/18/2007]
$900 Million In Alternative Energy Budget Cuts. In 2009, BP cut its alternative energy budget to between $500 million and $1 billion from $1.4 billion in 2008. “BP has shut down its alternative energy headquarters in London, accepted the resignation of its clean energy boss and imposed budget cuts in moves likely to be seen by environmental critics as further signs of the oil group moving “back to petroleum.” [The Guardian, 6/28/2009]

Bloomberg.com reports that Oil spill’s “fisheries failure” may signal the end of coastal towns:

“This is going to be the biggest economic disaster to hit Louisiana,” he said. “It could be 10 times the economic damage of Hurricane Katrina.”

Click here to read the full story.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG-b4n4yTGc]

Click here to see pictures of the spill at Time.com

Click here to send a message to President Obama to stop offshore drilling now, and for volunteer sign-up information.

Click here to go to the “Ban Offshore Drilling” petition on 350.org, and/or join the Facebook group 1,000,000 Strong Against Offshore Drilling.