Stop Fracking!!!

Did you know oil and gas companies are allowed to inject huge quantities of secret, toxic fluids, directly into our drinking water - and that the EPA is currently powerless to do anything about it?

High Pressure Hydraulic Fracturing (or fracking) is a method of drilling for natural gas by pumping a mixture of water and toxic, cancer-causing chemicals deep underground, and it's already responsible for poisoning the groundwater in states across the country.

An original investigative report by Earth Focus and UK'sEcologist Film Unit looks at the risks of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale. From toxic chemicals in drinking water to unregulated interstate dumping of potentially radioactive waste that experts fear can contaminate water supplies in major population centers including New York City, are the health consequences worth the economic gains?

Do we really need natural gas more than we need clean drinking water? Or uncontaminated food?

How Much Does “Free” Recycling Truly Cost?

Mountains of electronic waste is still being sent from the U.S. to sweatshops and open burn pits in Africa and Asia. This has been reported for a very long time and yet still nothing is being done to stem the flow.

The cost of dumping our leftover poison on the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth is shameful and because it is preventable it is more shameful still.

“Recycling” electronics may be “free” for U.S. consumers but whole cities and regions are being turned into wastelands of toxic smoke and ash and mountains of debris.

How much longer can our collective conscience bear this terrible onslaught of damage to human health and the environment to third world countries? Can we truly afford to just throw our hands up and say “That’s just the way it is”?

Some will argue that our waste gives these people a source of income, and if that is true then aren’t we as the creators of this toxic material obligated to make the handling of it less deadly?

The incredible amount of e-waste we generate is due in part to our addiction to always ‘needing’ the ‘latest’ electronic gadgets, but a lion’s share of that blame falls on a corporate mindset that generates ‘new’ devices with ever shorter life spans in order to maintain a constant profit margin.

How can we reverse the trend of increasing e-waste?

Consumers need to be made aware when they are adding to the e-waste problem and take action to stop buying ‘new’ while ‘old’ is still useable.

Corporations need to make products that last longer even though it cuts into their profit margin and future sales. In short, they need to develop a conscience.

Below is a very short list of recent media documenting how much e-waste is dumped on third world countries. And this is only from the U.S. There is even more coming from Europe and Australia.

Boston Globe:  Old TVs spark environmental dispute

Business Management:  The global e-waste problem

Business Week:  E-waste:  The dirty secret of recycling electronics

CBC News:  E-waste mounting in developing countries

CNET:  E-waste piles up in Nigeria

CrunchGear:  Guiyu:  E-waste capital of China

Scienceblogs:  What we waste:  A view of e-trash

ShanghaiIST:  Bonfire of the e-salvageries

CHEVRON Finally Found Guilty of Rainforest Destruction

Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network just announced a major victory for the Amazon rainforest. An Ecuadorean judge today found Chevron guilty of one of the largest environmental crimes in history and ordered the company to pay a whopping $8 billion to clean up its damage in the Amazon. 

Chevron immediately issued a statement condemning the judgment as "illegitimate and unenforceable" and announced plans to appeal.  This ruling clearly has Chevron riled up, as the statement suggests the ruling is "the product of fraud" and included this ominous line: "Chevron intends to see that the perpetrators of this fraud are held accountable for their misconduct."

Chevron apparently fails to see the irony of the phrase "held accountable for their misconduct" since today was a major slapdown of the company's destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.

AmazonWatch and Rainforest Action Network have released the following statement in response to the verdict:

“As of today, Chevron’s guilt for extensive oil contamination in the Amazon rainforest is official. It is time Chevron takes responsibility for these environmental and public health damages, which they have fought for the past 18 years.

“Today’s ruling in Ecuador against Chevron proves overwhelmingly that the oil giant is responsible for billions gallons of highly toxic waste sludge deliberately dumped into local streams and rivers, which thousands depend on for drinking, bathing, and fishing.

“Chevron has spent the last 18 years waging unprecedented public relations and lobbying campaigns to avoid cleaning up the environmental and public health catastrophe it left in the Amazon rainforest. Today’s guilty verdict sends a loud and clear message: It is time Chevron clean up its disastrous mess in Ecuador.

“Today’s case is historic and unprecedented. It is the first time Indigenous people have sued a multinational corporation in the country where the crime was committed and won.

“Today’s historic ruling against Chevron is a testament to the strength of the Ecuadorian people who have spent 18 years bringing Chevron to justice while suffering the effects of the company’s extensive oil contamination.”

Background

From 1964 to 1990 Chevron (formerly Texaco) operated a large oil concession in the northeastern region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, reaping billions of dollars in profits before pulling out of Ecuador in 1992.

Chevron has admitted during the long-running trial in both US and Ecuadorian courts that it created a system of oil extraction that led to the deliberate discharge of approximately 18 billion gallons of chemical-laden "water of formation" into the streams and rivers of Ecuador's Amazon, home to six indigenous groups.

Over the course of more than two decades of operations, Chevron abandoned more than 900 unlined waste pits gouged out of the jungle floor that leech toxins into soils and streams; contaminated the air by burning the waste pits; dumped oil along roads; and spilled millions of gallons of pure crude from ruptured pipelines. Internal company documents demonstrate that Chevron officials ordered field workers to destroy records of oil spills. The company refused to develop an environmental response plan or pipeline maintenance program, and Chevron never conducted a single health evaluation or environmental impact study despite the obvious harm it was causing.

17 Arrested in West Virginia Protesting Mountaintop Mining

Protesters left a banner on top of 7 billion gallons of toxic waste and were fined for littering. The irony of this is over the top.

We think nothing of flipping a switch to light our homes, to turn on a computer, or a TV, or keep food in a refrigerator. We pay our electrical bill and think nothing of it. These people are paying for our convenience with more than money.

They live downstream from a dam holding back billions of gallons of toxic sludge. The fear they live with day and night worrying when that dam will break must be overwhelming.

I wonder, if we were to trade places with these people and let them flip an electrical switch for the sake of convenience, what they would think of us protesting against what coal companies are doing to our surroundings, to our homes, to our sanity.

Remember, all their protests are falling on deaf ears at every level of government. Their representatives turn their backs on them and have them arrested for exercising their right to protest.

Protest photo by Chris Irwin, Margaret Killjoy