Help Fund the Ecosexual Revolution and End Mountain-top Removal Mining in Appalachia

by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News

Kick in and help out yall.

The film Goodbye Gauley Mountain weaves together the topics of sex, class, hillbillyism, queerness, capitalism and nature into a epic tale that will make you proud to be called a dirty environmentalist. This is, without compare, the sexiest nature documentary and one of the most profound films to deal with the beauty and tragedy of the Appalachian Mountains in the age of King Coal. It’ll make you fighting mad, then you’ll laugh, then you’ll get turned on. Hopefully you’ll fall wildly in love and get out there and defend your Lover Earth with a lust befitting the world’s most ancient and biodiversely kinky mountains. And the film could use your help.

From director Beth Stephens: “We are in the last 2 and a half days of the Kickstarter campaign for our film Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story. Please join us in getting the word out about the beauty of the Appalachian Mountains in the face of the devastation caused by mountain top removal. This unique documentary film squarely faces the horror of environmental devastation and even confronts it with love, joy and ecosexuality to entice others to stop MTR and stop it now!!”

Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story is currently in post production and nearly ready to be unleashed on the world.

I’ve had the chance to meet with and interview Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, whom I consider friends, and a snippet of that can be read below. The full interview has been printed in the soon to be mailed Earth First! Journal.

Crees Challenge Shady FSC Certification and Resolute Forest Products

by Intercontinental Cry

(Nemaska, May 15, 2013)  Earlier today the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) issued a formal challenge to the FSC Certification for Forest Management Unit 025-51 in the Saguenay Lac Saint Jean region in Québec held by Resolute Forest Products Inc. This is the largest Forest Management Unit in Québec.

In its brief to Accreditation Services International (ASI), the organization overseeing auditors contracted by forestry companies for FSC certifications, the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) contends that Resolute Forest Products’ refusal to respect the Baril-Moses Agreement between the Crees and Québec constitutes a major infringement to FSC’s International Principles 1 (compliance with laws, agreements and treaties) and 3 (compliance with the rights and interests of Indigenous Peoples) and by extension, Canada’s Boreal Standard.

Fracking for Uranium

first accidentally and now on purpose.

by John Upton / Grist

What has 92 protons, deforms growing children, sickens adults, and is being squeezed out of its underground lair by frackers operating in Pennsylvania?

U[hh], uranium!

The toxic and radioactive heavy metal is naturally trapped in the Marcellus shale, the fossil-fuel-laden rock formation popular with frackers that stretches from upstate New York through Pennsylvania to West Virginia and Ohio. We know the uranium is in there, and we know fracking sets it free, because scientists have been saying as much for years.

China Mining Tibet To Death

by Claude Arpi / Niti Central

On March 29, China’s State media reported that 83 miners had presumably died following a major landslide at the site of a gold mine in Gyama Valley, near the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. A few days later, 66 miners were confirmed dead and 17 were declared missing despite massive rescue efforts.

Reports from Tibet further stated that the miners (only two of them were Tibetans) were asleep in their tents when the tragedy occurred. They were buried by a 3-kilometre wide and 30 metres deep mass of rocks and debris.

How Obama Defanged the Environmental Protection Agency

by Joshua Frank / Counterpunch

It was a tumultuous tenure, productive by some accounts, lackluster by most, but one thing is for certain, Lisa Jackson’s short time as administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency was anything but dull. On December 27, 2012 the often-fiery Jackson announced she was not going to return for a second term, and it is surely not difficult to see why she’s fleeing her post.

Since President Obama was ushered into office in 2008, the EPA has consistently faced ridicule and criticism from corporate polluters and their greedy allies in Washington. On virtually every occasion Obama refused to side with Jackson’s more rationale, often science-based positions, whether it was cleaning up the air or forcing the natural resource industries to abide by existing regulations. Ultimately, the EPA is only as formidable as the White House allows it to be, and on Obama’s watch the agency has not received the support it has desired or deserved.

Take the case of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Even though those three horrible months watching oil spew into the Gulf have seeped out of our collective memory, the BP disaster is one of the largest stains on Jackson’s four-year stint at EPA. Soon after the underwater blowout, Jackson, a New Orleans native, demanded BP halt their use of the toxic dispersant Corexit 9500 to clean up their gushing mess. She took a tough line against a company that had gotten away with far too much for too long.

Monsanto’s Dirty War

by Zach Kaldveer and Ronnie Cummins / Counterpunch

The biotech industry, led by Monsanto, will soon descend on the state of Washington to try their best to defeat I-522, a citizens’ ballot initiative to require mandatory labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. Voters should prepare themselves for an onslaught of discredited talking points, nonsensical red herrings, and outright lies designed to convince voters that they shouldn’t have the right to know what’s in the food they eat.

Topping the biotech industry’s propaganda playlist will no doubt be this old familiar tune: that requiring retailers to verify non-GMO ingredients in order to label them will be burdensome and costly, and the additional cost will be passed on to consumers who are already struggling to feed their families.

In Memoriam: Joe Feller, Much More Than a Law Professor

by Holly Doremus / Legal Planet

Joe Feller, second from left, with students in his Natural Resources Field Seminar in 2008. Photo by Bret Birdsong.

Today I learned the sad news that Joe Feller, Professor of Law at Arizona State University, has died after being hit by a car. Joe was a fine scholar (coincidentally, I was reading a terrific piece he wrote on The Adjudication that Ate Arizona Water Law when the news came in), but he was so much more than that. Joe, whose father David was a highly respected labor and civil rights lawyer for two decades before he joined the faculty at Berkeley Law, knew firsthand that (to borrow the words of Dan Tarlock) environmental law is all about marrying wonder to power.  Joe loved the west’s great landscapes, even the ones most people don’t find picturesque or beautiful. He knew that law review articles don’t save landscapes. Joe did just that. He used every tool available, from buy-outs to litigation, to reduce the amount of livestock grazing on some of the west’s most ecologically fragile lands. And he got his students out to those lands, passing along both his love of them and his deep understanding of how easily and lastingly they could be damaged by careless use.

Smuggler Caught with More than 10 Percent of an Entire Species

by P. Tanson / Traffic

Ploughshare tortoises, native to Madagascar, are one of the most critically endangered species on the planet. And, while countless conservation groups are actively working to save them, the arrest of a wildlife smuggler in Thailand is proving just how easily a handful of criminals could bring about their demise.

Authorities say they recently arrested a 38-year-old Thai man at an airport in Bankok attempting to collect a bag containing 54 ploughshare tortoises smuggled in from Madagascar. Although that may seem less severe than some larger scale environmental crimes, this haul of tortoises actually accounts for nearly 13 percent of the estimated 400 or so individuals thought to still be in existence in the wild.

Tax-payer Funded Eco-saboteur Video Game Draws Controversy

A screen grab of the controversial video game called “Pipe Trouble” shows a telling threat from a bearded “eco-terrorist”. The video game is meant to accompany a new documentary about the pipeline debate in British Columbia. A string of pipeline attacks have taken place in recent years in the region. You can play the game  here.

from CTV News (play the game here)

An online video game funded by Ontario taxpayers is causing a firestorm of controversy in three provinces for depicting pipeline bombings.

The game, called “Pipe Trouble,” was released by TV Ontario, the province’s public broadcaster. TVO recently removed the game from its website after critics charged that it depicts eco-terrorist activities. The broadcaster said the game will be independently reviewed.

The game is described on a TVO blog as a “companion ethical game” to a documentary called “Trouble in the Peace,” which addresses local opposition to pipelines and the bombing of pipelines in Peace River, B.C.

Fracking Boom to Hit New Mexico

 by Kevin Robinson-Avila / from the Albuquerque Journal

 

FARMINGTON — Preliminary results from Mancos shale wells in northwestern New Mexico are boosting industry excitement about a new oil and gas boom in the region.

Companies must learn a lot more about the shale formation before any gushers explode, but some of the 22 exploratory wells drilled to date have shown solid commercial potential for oil and gas production, according to industry executives who attended a conference this week in Farmington to discuss production potential in the Mancos play, a previously untapped section of the San Juan Basin.