Oxford University Student Union Votes to Oppose Shell Investment

By Adam Vaughan, The Guardian

Oxford University’s Shell Geoscience Laboratory is funded with £5.9m from the oil company. 

Students and alumni of Oxford University will protest this afternoon at the opening of a new lab in its Earth sciences department that is funded with £5.9m from oil company Shell.

Campaigners say the partnership – which will see the climate and energy secretary, Ed Davey, attend the Shell Geoscience Laboratory’s official opening on Thursday – undermines the university’s credibility and conflicts with its work on climate change. Oxford alumni including environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt and solar entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett yesterday called Shell “a particularly inappropriate choice of funder” in a letter published in the Guardian.

Tar Sands Waste Piling Up in Detroit

by Ian Austen, Cross Posted from The New York Times

WINDSOR, Ontario — Assumption Park gives residents of this city lovely views of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit skyline. Lately they’ve been treated to another sight: a three-story pile of petroleum coke covering an entire city block on the other side of the Detroit River.

Detroit’s ever-growing black mountain is the unloved, unwanted and long overlooked byproduct of Canada’s oil sands boom.

And no one knows quite what to do about it, except Koch Carbon, which owns it.

The company is controlled by Charles and David Koch, wealthy industrialists who back a number of conservative and libertarian causes including activist groups that challenge the science behind climate change. The company sells the high-sulfur, high-carbon waste, usually overseas, where it is burned as fuel.

The coke comes from a refinery alongside the river owned by Marathon Petroleum, which has been there since 1930. But it began refining exports from the Canadian oil sands — and producing the waste that is sold to Koch — only in November.

“What is really, really disturbing to me is how some companies treat the city of Detroit as a dumping ground,” said Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan state representative for that part of Detroit. “Nobody knew this was going to happen.” Almost 56 percent of Canada’s oil production is from the petroleum-soaked oil sands of northern Alberta, more than 2,000 miles north.

Peru Spares Amazon Rainforest From Oil And Gas Push

Ashanika warriors occupy oil boat in the Peruvian Amazon, May 2009

Cross Posted From Root Force

This article from the Guardian shows why indigenous movements have fought so hard for Peru’s new law requiring extractive industry to consult with affected indigenous communities, why industrial interests have so consistently opposed, and why mining companies pushed so hard for the recent decision that excluded millions of indigenous Peruvians from that law’s protection. Note, of course, that the oil company is making it clear that they will still go ahead with exploiting indigenous lands whether the affected communities like it or not. We’ll see what the communities have to say about that.

New hydrocarbon sites will all be offshore, but campaigners fear contentious oil and gas development in Amazon will still go ahead

Peru has announced a bidding round for new oil and gas concessions but, contrary to what was initially expected, none of them are in the Amazon rainforest.

Nine concessions are to be auctioned, energy company Perupetro declared recently, but all of them are offshore along Peru’s Pacific Ocean coast.

This constitutes a significant change of plan by Perupetro which last September issued a statement that before the end of 2012 36 new concessions would be established.

According to a presentation made to the World Heavy Oil Congress in Aberdeen in Scotland the same month, 27 of these concessions – totaling millions of hectares – would be in the Amazon.

In November Perupetro’s then chairwoman, Rosa Maria Ortiz, said the establishment of the lots would be postponed until this year, but when the bidding round was declared on 25 March only nine of the 36, all of them offshore, were included.

Perupetro’s new chairman, Luis Ortiga Cuneo, who took over from Ortiz in December, told Peruvian press the reason for the postponement was a ‘prior consultation law’ approved by Congress in 2011.

The law’s stated aim is to give “indigenous or native peoples” the right to be previously consulted about development projects or “administrative or legislative” measures affecting their collective rights to their “quality of life, cultural identity or physical existence.”

Abolish the Fossil Fuel Industry

by Henia Belalia, Cross Posted from Peaceful Uprising

How do activists use social movement history? What lessons can be learned from past movements for social change in our fight to stop climate change? We often rely on lessons and tactics from the U.S. Civil Rights movement. We think this might be the best source for our lessons from the past.

Think again.

How about the Abolition of the Slave Trade? As an activist, I fight for climate justice. As an historian and a scholar of law and history, I study slavery and the slave trade.

The movement for civil rights—certainly the mainstream movement—was based on the perceived need to have equal rights in an existing system. The right to vote, the right to fair housing. An end to segregation. Integration into the existing status quo at every level. And none of these things are bad things. Having equal rights is better than not having equal rights. But even the more radical wing of the civil rights movement questioned this strategy. S.N.C.C. members often asked, “Do we really want to die for the right to vote?”

The movement for climate justice is different. We are demanding “system change, not climate change.”

Utah Tar Sands Action Camp July 21-28

Cross Posted from Seeds for Peace

This summer, people from across the country will come together to stop the first tar sands mine in the USA from ever breaking ground. Activists from Utah-based organizations Peaceful Uprising, Canyon Country Rising Tide, Before it Starts, and more have joined forces to make sure this is a powerful and effective moment in the growing movement to stop extreme extraction.

The Canadian petroleum corporation US Oil Sands, Inc is targeting the remote state lands of eastern Utah to be the first tar sands project in the USA. Because political and regulatory objections are diminished in Utah, this project at PR Spring now has the green-light from the state to begin commercial operations.

If companies like US Oil Sands can prove that these types of dirty extraction operations are economically viable in Utah, then more tar sands and oil shale projects will spring up across the region. The legal efforts to stop this  project have stalled construction, but time has run out. It is now time for people to come together and say NO Tar Sands in the US, NO Tar Sands anywhere!

Utah Tar Sands Resistance Disrupts Energy Conference

UPDATE: New video of Utah Tar Sands Resistance Action:

 

by Brittany Green-Miner and Caroline Connolly, Cross Posted from Fox 13

SALT LAKE CITY – Protesters stormed an energy conference at the University of Utah on Tuesday, criticizing the university for holding a meeting that focused on tar sands development in the western United States.

Shouting at a crowd of potential investors and researchers, protesters with the Utah Tar Sands Resistance said a tar sands project in Utah would destroy the state, temporarily halting discussion over oil development projects in Utah.

“People will be coming from all over the country this summer to stop the U.S. Oil Sands mine from happening,” one protester said.

Fearless Summer: Join a National Movement Against Extreme Energy

Cross posted from We Are Fearless Summer

Over the past few years we’ve witnessed a rising tide of courage from the frontlines; communities from the pinewoods of East Texas to the hollers of West Virginia have come together to defend the land and the people from the ravages of extreme energy.  Yet with every new frack-well drilled, pipeline laid, and mountain blasted, the extraction industry pushes our planet closer to irreversible tipping points.

But now we are coming together as a movement to push back.

For too long we have struggled separately and we are running out of time.  If we are going to reclaim our future, we must begin to speak with one voice.  That’s why we are calling for the national movement against extreme energy to join in a summer of coordinated action.   As this industry continues to escalate its attack of life on earth, we must respond by asserting our dignity and escalating our action for a livable future. In the face of unfathomable ecological destruction and looming runaway climate change, we must take the kind of bold action that is necessary to save the planet.  We must all draw our lines in the sand.  We must face our fears together ; we must take our future fearlessly into our hands and change business as usual.

Will you join us in ringing in a #FearlessSummer?

Tar Sands Pipeline Oil Spill in Minnesota

Cross posted from Indigenous Environmental Network

by Marty Cobenais

The Enbridge pipeline in Viking, Minnesota

Viking, MN – The small northern western Minnesota town of approximately 100 people was the site of the latest Alberta Canada tar sands pipeline oil spill.  Enbridge Energy made the initial report that 600 gallons (15 barrels) of oil was released at the Viking Station, from line 67.  This is also known as the Alberta Clipper pipeline, which was completed in 2011.  Enbridge is currently seeking permission to increase the amount of oil from 450,000 barrels to 570,000 barrels per day, but was added another application to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to increase the flow to the maximum of 880,000 barrels.  This is the same diameter of pipeline the TransCanada Keystone XL, 800,000 barrels per day, which is under great scrutiny in its Presidential Permit application.

An Enbridge official on the scene stated that the leak was detected by workers doing maintenance. The official said the workers smelled oil and upon inspection, they discovered the leak.  The leak was determined to be at a “Transmitter”.  The transmitter is the unit that measures the amount of pressure in the pipeline.  This leak was small enough to not signal the main terminal that there was a leak.  The transmitter is at the end of a 2-inch pipe that is screwed into the main pipeline. The Enbridge employee stated that the leak was in the threads.  He stated that it was Line 2 and not Line 67, but after further questions as to other parts he was unsure of what pipelines locations were.

Some Oil Spill Damage Can’t Be Cleaned Up

by Grayson, Earth First! Newswire

Photo from evelynwithoutoil.blogspot.com

A recent article in Newsweek outlines the shocking health problems, including neurological damage, that workers and residents at the 2010 BP oil spill disaster site have suffered in the three years since the incident. Considering the insane amount of oil spills that have taken place in the last couple months, it was too relevant to ignore.

As Newsweek writes, one victim of the spill, Jamie Griffin, was feeding cleanup crews during the disaster. Representatives from BP told Jamie that the oil tracking into her workspace was “safe,” and that she should “just mop it up,” which she attempted to do, having no idea the pain it was going to cause:

Within days, the 32-year-old single mother was coughing up blood and suffering constant headaches. . . Like hundreds, possibly thousands, of workers on the cleanup, Griffin soon fell ill with a cluster of excruciating, bizarre, grotesque ailments. By July, unstoppable muscle spasms were twisting her hands into immovable claws. In August, she began losing her short-term memory. . . The right side, but only the right side, of her body “started acting crazy. It felt like the nerves were coming out of my skin. It was so painful. My right leg swelled—my ankle would get as wide as my calf—and my skin got incredibly itchy.”

“These are the same symptoms experienced by soldiers who returned from the Persian Gulf War with Gulf War syndrome,” says Dr. Michael Robichaux, a Louisiana physician and former state senator, who treated Griffin and 113 other patients with similar complaints. As a general practitioner, Robichaux says he had “never seen this grouping of symptoms together: skin problems, neurological impairments, plus pulmonary problems.”

Cleanup workers were not the only victims; coastal residents also suffered. “My 2-year-old grandson and I would play out in the yard,” says Shirley Tillman of the Mississippi coastal town Pass Christian. “You could smell oil and stuff in the air, but on the news they were saying it’s fine, don’t worry. Well, by October, he was one sick little fellow. All of a sudden, this very active little 2-year-old was constantly sick.”

Much of this pain and suffering was not caused by the oil alone, but by BP’s response to the spill; as if allowing hundreds of thousands of barrels of deadly crude oil to flow into the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t enough, many of you may remember that BP used a “dispersant” to “clean-up” (read: hide) the oil. The dispersant they used was Corexit, a substance that has now been found to make crude oil 52 times as toxic. Corexit is still a standard dispersant used for oil spill cleanups, as it is approved for use by the Oil Pollution Act. This dispersant likely played a large role in the physical and neurological damage workers and volunteers are still suffering today.

The Boston Marathon Bombing, Chechnya and Ecocidal Tendencies

by Panagioti, Earth First! Newswire

Tired of looking at the same blurry images of the Brothers Tsarnaev? Here’s Lake Kezenoy-am (Chechen: Къоьзаной-Iaм) in Chechnya near border with Dagestan, Russia that goes through Andiyskiy Khrebet (Andian Ridge). Salmo ezenami, a rare species of trout, are native only to the lake; however their population is threatened with extinction.

There a good chance that you are reading this now because of our initial post on the Boston Marathon bombing, “A Tale of Two Terrorisms,” going viral last week, catching the eye of a couple hundred thousand readers (the post was just one short story in an extensive series of articles on drones, repression and the techno-industrial empire). Within a few days it seemed everyone was disturbingly trying to boost their social media hits by referencing Boston, for example the Westboro Baptists claiming it was “God” who brought on the carnage because Massachusetts was the first state to pass same-sex marriage.

By now, I’d guess that you already know more about the alleged young Chechen bombers, the brothers Tsarnaev, than you know about most of your own next door neighbors. But how much have you learned about the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and what some call “one of the bloodiest occupations of the 21st century”?

The mountains in the area Sharoi, Chechnya.

Yesterday, an EF! Newswire author hinted at the history: While the US stood as allies behind the Russian Federation’s chauvinism in Chechnya, the landscape was rendered, according to an aid to [Boris] Yeltsin, an “environmental wasteland.” Oil spills, radioactive pollution, and chemical spills resulted from the massive bombardment of Chechnya. Half of Chechnya today is officially considered a “zone of ecological disaster” by the Russian Federation.