Just What The World Needs…

Page October 31st, 2007

How cool would this be? From Mark Hertsgaard via Alternet:

Fresh from winning the Nobel peace prize for his climate change evangelism, Al Gore is apparently considering an invitation from a prominent environmental group to engage in civil disobedience against the construction of new coal-fired power plants.

Rainforest Action Network issued the invitation to the former U.S. vice president, according to RAN executive director Michael Brune. The San Francisco-based group has a twenty year history of protesting against destructive logging practices and other causes of climate change; it specializes in targeting corporations as much as governments.

The king of Eco-Geekery, my friend Brian, blogged “Good on Gore: going all Gandhi” a while back, telling us about Gore’s comment “I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers, and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants,”.

More from Hertsgaard:

If Gore did end up getting arrested during a protest against coal-fired power plant, it would make front page news throughout the world and put a spotlight on what some climate scientists and activists consider the single most important priority in the fight against climate change: halting the use of coal as the world’s top source of electricity production.

And that’s exactly right. I’m only a fledgling activist with Greenpeace (I’ve only done 5 actions with Greenpeace, two of them being coal actions - just call me Crane Girl), but even I know that the whole goal of doing actions is to bring attention to the issue, not to get arrested… and of course, since these actions are nonviolent civil disobedience, you’re going to get arrested. It’s a consequence. Not the goal.

And just like Greenpeace, Gore has been working with governments around the world to effect change, and get them to act to slow down climate change. But sometimes, urgent issues require putting exclamation points on the negotiations with governments, and that’s exactly what creative direct action groups do.

So, I hope Gore goes for it. I’m trying to imagine being chained to something with him. “Hey, Mr. Vice President… er, President, want an energy bar?”

Thanks, Al, for all you’re doing. You’ve been phenomenal.

• Environment , Activism , Climate Change
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Page October 30th, 2007

The spilled oil from the grounded Exxon Valdez spreads into Prince William Sound. Photo credit: USGS.

An oiled white-winged scoter struggles on the beach at Green Island. Photo credit: State of Alaska Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. Click all photos to enlarge.

Some of us remember it. Some of us were too young, or weren’t even born yet. But anyone who gives a damn about America and the breathtaking beauty, scale, and delicate ecosystems of its wilderness areas, should burn the Exxon Valdez catastrophe into their memory:

More than 11 million gallons of North Slope crude oil poured through the punctured steel hull of a tanker grounded on a well charted reef in Prince William Sound on Friday [March 24, 1989] unleashing the largest crude oil spill ever to foul U.S. waters.

[snip]

The disaster threatened to wreak havoc in one of continent’s richest marine environments just as herring were returning to spawn and juvenile salmon were migrating from the rivers where they hatched.

The oil spill spread, in part pushed along by storms, ultimately polluting at least 1,300 miles of shoreline. The cause was simple: it was determined that Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the tanker, was “too drunk to legally operate a ship“. After years in and out of court, Hazelwood eventually had to pay a $50,000 fine and do community service.

The environmental aftermath of the spill was heartbreaking, and we haven’t seen the end of it:

Some 2,000 sea otters, 302 harbor seals and about 250,000 seabirds died in the days immediately following the spill. Now researchers writing in the journal Science caution that more than a decade later, a significant amount of oil still persists and the long-term impacts of oil spills may be more devastating than previously thought.

[Note: Exxon-funded research says otherwise.]

Humans were profoundly affected too, which has resulted in seemingly endless litigation (going on 20 years) trying to get ExxonMobil to pay up. The latest news is in today’s Houston Chronicle.

Quarterly profit results for Exxon Mobil Corp. 1Q 2006 — $ 8.40 Billion 2Q 2006 — $ 10.36 Billion 3Q 2006 — $ 10.49 Billion 4Q 2006 — $ 10.25 Billion 1Q 2007 — $ 9.28 Billion 2Q 2007 — $ 10.26 Billion Source: Exxon Mobil

Exxon asks high court to void Valdez spill damages

Since the Exxon Valdez plowed into an Alaskan reef in 1989, pouring 11 million gallons of crude oil into the clear waters of Prince William Sound, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. has paid $3.1 billion in fines, cleanup costs and environmental restoration, as well as $300 million in settlements with thousands of Alaskan fishermen, cannery workers and landowners.

[snip]

Exxon already got an Alaskan jury’s $5 billion punitive damages award reduced by half. Now it is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to erase it altogether. The high court discussed Exxon’s case in private last week and will announce as early as today whether it will accept it.

Now you can see why I’ve posted the graphic and table of Exxon’s quarterly profits. If you’re earning approximately TEN BILLION DOLLARS every three months, why is shelling out FIVE BILLION DOLLARS so damned difficult?

Update: The SCOTUS has agreed to hear Exxon’s case. See dailyKos writer AdamB’s comment, and the discussion.

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• Environment , ExxonMobile
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Page October 16th, 2007

A couple of years ago, I thought about setting up a blog called www.BloggingReallyBadIdeas.com. So many possible fluff entries, so little time: The Spice Girls Reunion, inviting Tom Cruise to be on one’s talk show, Jelly Shoes™, Warrant… . And so many possible serious entries: commanding an oil tanker while drunk, producing a frightening mixture of organics, acids, and high level nuclear waste, and putting it in open trenches and single-wall tanks, and, most recently, Russian floating nuclear reactors.

This story caught my eye back in August. I’m going to post the video first, then the link to the article. As if the proposal wasn’t bad enough, they had to add really crappy Eastern European techno music. Absolutely surreal:

It gets even better. From the 7 August 2007 Wall Street Journal:

In an industrial park in northern Jakarta, traders hawk electronics and pirated DVDs. From a steel-grated storefront here, Alexander Chilikov is trying to sell a floating nuclear power plant.

“There’s 100% no risk,” says Mr. Chilikov, a 44-year-old former vodka salesman from Russia who says he spent six years in prison there. “If you have the information, you can’t be against this.”

There are so many things wrong on so many levels in the last couple of sentences.

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• Nuclear Proliferation and Security , Environment , Really Bad Ideas
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