News Feeds | ecology.iww.org (2024)

North American Windpower - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 06:56

Van Oord has been contracted for construction of the 1.5 GW Baltica 2 Offshore Wind Farm, located 40 km offshore in the Polish Baltic Sea, being developed by Ørsted and PGE.

Van Oord is set to transport and install 111 extended monopiles, of which 107 will serve as wind turbine foundations and four as offshore substation foundations.

Van Oord will deploy offshore installation vessel Aeolus and heavy-lift installation vessel Svanen for the project. The Svanen will undergo an upgrade this year, which includes extending the gantry crane to increase its lifting capacity. The company’s flexible fallpipe vessel Nordnes will be deployed to install rock at all foundation locations.

The post Van Oord Awarded Baltica 2 Offshore Wind Farm Contract appeared first on North American Windpower.

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North American Windpower - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 06:53

PGS has won an offshore wind site characterization contract in Europe, with mobilization scheduled for July.

The company will use its ultra-high-resolution 3D streamer, which PGS says will provide more detailed subsurface data for shallower targets than traditional seismic acquisition systems.

“We are very pleased with this offshore wind site characterization contract award, which extends visibility for our offshore wind operations through the third quarter,” says Rune Olav Pedersen, PGS president and CEO.

“We successfully entered the offshore wind site characterization market last year and have secured continuous activity since startup. Our geophysical approach by using an ultra-high-resolution 3D towed streamer system is significantly more efficient than traditional 2D and geotechnical solutions. Our clients value the shorter lead time and the high data quality we offer. There is a significant volume of offshore wind site characterization projects out for tender, and we expect increasing activity going forward.”

The contract has an approximate duration of two months.

The post PGS Awarded Offshore Project Characterization Contract appeared first on North American Windpower.

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North American Windpower - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 06:31

Inland and Coastal Marina Systems (ICMS) at the Port of Newhaven have completed its Crew Transfer Vessel (CTV) upgrade supporting operations at the 400 MW Rampion Offshore wind farm off England’s south coast.

The refurbishment, which forms part of the project’s O&M base, included the installation of a floating concrete breakwater in Newhaven Harbor to provide berths for CTVs. The O&M base also includes quay facilities for ships for the commissioning and maintenance of wind farms.

The structure was manufactured at ICMS’ precast factories in Banagher, Ireland. Along with Knight Brown, ICMS designed and installed a concrete breakwater equipped with external piling guides and essential services such as electricity, water and fuel.

Rampion is owned and operated by RWE Renewable Energies.

Photo source

The post Rampion Offshore Farm Gets CTV Upgrade appeared first on North American Windpower.

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Climate Change News - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 06:22

For over 20 years, Nigeria has been trying to build a pipeline that would bring gas through the Sahara desert to Algeria and on to customers in Europe.

The hope is that it would raise gas exports and bring money into state coffers. The plan got a boost in 2021 as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine left Europe scrambling for alternative sources of gas in the short-term.

But now, as more problems emerge, experts are questioning the wisdom of investing vast public sums in the project.

Europe’s gas demand is declining and is likely to be increasingly fulfilled by booming exports of liquified natural gas (LNG) from the US and Qatar.

Meanwhile, theft of gas from pipelines remains an issue as northern Nigeria and Niger, where the pipeline will pass through, have grown more insecure.

The Nigerian government has spent over $1 billion on its section, with plans for a further $1 billion more to be invested. Experts told Climate Home they fear that much of this money could be wasted.

Indonesia turns traditional Indigenous land into nickel industrial zone

Stranded asset

Ademola Henry is an independent adviser to the oil and gas industry. He warned that the pipeline could become economically unviable before the end of its expected lifespan.

He warned that if this happens, the government might have to increase borrowing or taxes or cut spending to offset the losses.

Chukwumerije Okereke is a professor of global climate governance and public policy at Bristol University. He said the pipeline “could result in profits and socioeconomic benefits for the people”.

But, he warned that gas thefts and insecurity in Niger “could pose significant challenges”. Niger suffered a military coup last year and the new government has withdrawn from the Economic Organisation of West African States (Ecowas), a regional political union. This “further complicates the situation”, Okereke said.

He said that the government must “deeply consider” any investments in the sector, especially given global commitments to triple renewable energy and Nigeria’s abundant resources like solar.

US trade agency backs oil and gas drilling in Bahrain despite Biden pledge

Gas glut

The Trans-Saharan pipeline is a joint project between Nigeria, Algeria and Niger. The plan is for a 4,000 km pipeline to ferry up to 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Nigeria, through Niger, to Algeria where it would connect up with existing pipelines across the Mediterranean to Europe.

With Nigeria and Algeria’s state oil and gas companies taking the lead, it was originally scheduled to open in 2015 but there was no progress on it between 2009 and 2019.

In 2019, the pipeline began to be mentioned in planning documents. The three governments signed an agreement to speed it up after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine left Europe looking for more non-Russian gas.

At that time, Nigeria’s then oil minister Timpire Sylva told European Union diplomats that Nigeria would like to sell them more gas, which he said would “solve the energy problem in Europe”.

But he was not the only one making that offer. The US in particular has ramped up its investment in export terminals to ship its liquified natural gas to Europe and elsewhere.

Ecuador’s new president tries to wriggle out of oil drilling referendum

The International Energy Agency predicts a glut of this gas when this infrastructure is up and running, meaning more competition for Nigerian gas sellers.

At the same time, the IEA predicts that Europe’s demand for gas will keep falling, as the invasion of Ukraine fast-tracked plans to get off fossil fuels.

At the time of publication, only the Nigerian section of the pipeline – known as AKK – is being built.

Okereke warned: “If the Nigerian government proceeds with its part of the Trans-Saharan project and launches it in July this year, despite uncertainties in other participating countries, there’s a risk of assets being stranded – this could lead to substantial losses for the government, impacting taxpayers”.

The post Problems mount for Sahara gas pipeline, leaving Nigerian taxpayers at risk appeared first on Climate Home News.

Categories: H. Green News

CCAN Polar Bear Plunge Sets Record for Biggest Crowd Taking a Dip to "Keep Winter Cold"After the hottest year on record, over 340 climate activists from across the DMV took the biggest plunge yet, raising awareness and funds to fight climate change.

National Harbor, MD — On Saturday, February 10, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) 19th Annual Polar Bear Plunge set a new record with more than 340 activists plunging into the Potomac River and other locations to raise awareness and funds for fighting climate change. It took place on a day that was 17 degrees warmer than normal and in the aftermath of the hottest year on record by a wide margin, suggesting heightened awareness of global warming is inspiring more people than ever to take action.

“Climate change is a big fight, a scary fight,” said University of Maryland President, Daryll J. Pines during a rally before the Plunge. “But I want to tell you that you are not alone… We are the ones we have been looking for. We are committed to the partnership with CCAN, and to building a more sustainable planet.”

Andreana Lin, member of a CCAN volunteer group based in northern Virginia, said that being part of CCAN allows her to “be part of a world that could look past, having food on the table, that could look past the worries of having enough money in their pockets; and could look at something far bigger. Not just the worries of the present, but the hopes and dreams of the future and the next generation.”

Andres Jimenez, CCAN Board Member, Executive Director of Green 2.0, and member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors said, “When things stall at the national level, it’s so important that we look at our backyard and say, ‘How can I change things? How can I make my community better?’”

”There are two reasons we have been so successful. Number one is because all of our supporters donate their precious time, and two: because they donate every year to grow the movement and influence legislators. Because of them, we have made amazing progress, and because of them, I know we will win this fight!“ said Quentin Scott, CCAN Federal Director.

CCAN’s 2024 Polar Bear Plunge sponsors included: Green 2.0, Neighborhood Sun, The Electrical Alliance, US Wind, Rewiring America, MAREC Action, Evergreen Action, and EDF Renewables.

The need to bring awareness to this cause was underscored recently throughout the Mid-Atlantic, where residents experienced “June in January,” with temperatures reaching the 80s – the highest observed in January since record-keeping began in 1872. This may be why this year’s plunge saw record numbers of participants and volunteers than ever before.

In addition to over 300 people participating in person, there were also dozens of supporters who sent in videos of themselves taking the plunge in their own neck of the woods. A selection of those videos will be available next week along with photos and videos of the National Harbor event.

This year’s plunge raised over $200,000 in funds that will be used to fight the harsh effects of climate change in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and across the United States. For more information, visit our site: www.keepwintercold.org

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Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the oldest and largest grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with climate change in the Chesapeake Bay region. For more than 20 years, CCAN has been at the center of the fight for clean energy and wise climate policy in Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and beyond.

The post CCAN Polar Bear Plunge for the Climate Sets Record for Biggest Crowd Taking A Dip to “Keep Winter Cold” appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Categories: G2. Local Greens

Yale Environment 360 - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 05:32

In Greenland, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as across the rest of the world, the icy, rocky landscape is turning increasingly green, a new study finds.

Read more on E360 →

Categories: H. Green News

Mining.Com - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 05:03

Australian miners Horizon Minerals (ASX: HRZ) and Greenstone Resources (ASX: GSR) have agreed to merge in an all-stock deal to create a new emerging gold producer in Western Australia’s goldfields.

The combined company, which will continue to trade as Horizon Minerals, would have global mineral resources of around 1.8 million gold ounces. It would also hold exploration assets in the gold mining hubs of Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie.

The transaction will see Horizon buying 100% of the ordinary shares in Greenstone and 100% of the listed Greenstone options. Upon completion, Horizon shareholders will own 63.1% of the merged entity, which will continue to operate under the Horizon Minerals brand. Greenstone shareholders will own the remaining 36.9% of the combined business.

“This really is a logical consolidation of complementary assets, which creates greater potential for Horizon to unlock the value within our longer project pipeline,” the company’s chief executive officer, Grant Haywood, said in the statement.

The combined mining company will be pursuing its growth strategy from a position of greater market scale, underpinned by a cash and listed investments balance of about $14.9 million and a lower consolidated cost base, they said.

The merger transaction is anticipated to be completed in June 2024, subject to various customary conditions.

Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

The Revelator - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 05:00

Today we know a good bit about cheetahs: They’re the fastest land animal, going from 0 to 60 mph in three seconds. They’re expert hunters, although they often lose their prey to bigger predators. And they also face big threats, occupying just 9% of their historic range. But when Dr. Laurie Marker first began working with the animals in the early 1970s, many people didn’t even know if they were a dog or a cat.

“They’ve got dog-like claws,” she explains. “I think that confused all the farmers.”

Marker has dedicated her career to closing that knowledge gap. She began working with cheetahs in 1974 at the Wildlife Safari, a wildlife park in Oregon, which included trips to South West Africa (now Namibia) to research the rewilding of cheetahs born in captivity. During her time there she realized that farmers were killing hundreds of cheetahs a year to protect their herds, and some of the world’s last remaining cheetah populations could be lost.

So in 1990 she moved to Namibia and launched the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an organization that does research, education and conservation to help secure a future for wild cheetahs and support surrounding communities.

Laurie Marker. Photo: Jennifer Leigh Warner

Marker spoke to The Revelator about how dogs can help cheetahs, what risks climate change poses, and why addressing poverty would aid conservation.

Where did cheetahs historically range?

Around1900 there were about 100,000 cheetahs, and they were found throughout Asia and Africa. They had a very large distribution. But by the 1950s they were gone in most of the areas of Asia — the last of the Asian cheetahs are in Iran, and there’s probably less than 20 there. By the 1950s they were gone in India. Today there’s only about 7,000 cheetahs left, and they’re found in about 23 countries in 31 populations, of which 20 of those populations are under 100 individuals.

We have put cheetahs back into India in the last year, and I just got word two of the cheetahs that we actually sent over had a litter of cubs. So today, I think there’s three or four new cubs in India.

Conflicts with people are a big threat to cheetahs. What solutions have you found?

The majority — more than 80% — of the cheetahs found today are outside of protected areas. Here in Namibia, about 90% are found outside of protected areas. When I moved here, it was to find out more about how they were living on the farmlands with livestock farmers and then what kinds of programs could be developed.

What we’ve done in the last 30 years is develop a variety of programs so that cheetahs and people could live in harmony together. Many of those are about good livestock management, good rangeland management and good wildlife management. I think farmers around the world think predators are all going to eat all their livestock. Where we as farmers can actually play a key role in protecting our livestock. It’s not that much work, but you have to think about it. Predators aren’t just out there wanting to eat your livestock. What they want is an easy meal.

Puppies being raised as livestock guarding dogs. Photos: Isabella Groc

So we use livestock guarding dogs, which we breed and place with farmers, that protect their livestock. Around here people mostly have goats, sheep and cattle. And the other area that I work in is up in Somaliland where there’s mostly goats, sheep and camels. Through an integrated program like good livestock management and having dogs, you can actually reduce your livestock loss 80 to 100% and not have to kill predators. We not only like cheetahs, we like all the other predators because predators play a really important role in the health of the ecosystems.

We have leopards, which are harder to live with, but if you get the right practices down, it is all the same. We also have hyenas, brown and spotted, as well as jackals and caracals. Those are the main predators around.

Cheetahs actually are one of the best hunters on the savannas. When they eat, they eat very rapidly and then move away. So there’s usually things left over that allows for more biodiversity. For instance, I always say to the farming community that if you have cheetahs on your land, the cheetah will make a kill and the jackals will be eating off of what the cheetah killed, and the jackal isn’t going to be in your goat yard. Not only is it feeding the jackal, but it’s feeding the birds of prey and all the other insects and small carnivorous mammals. That’s why you end up with greater biodiversity, and that’s the important part of a top predator within a healthy ecosystem.

Are more protected areas needed?

I think in Africa there might be 12 game reserves large enough for cheetahs. Cheetahs have one of the largest home ranges of any animal on Earth. So between the cheetahs and the African wild dogs, which we also work with here, you have huge ranges. And so that means you have to develop programs within those ranges so that the people and the wildlife can live together.

In Namibia about 20% of the land is protected by the government. And then another 20% are conservancies. Namibia is a leader in conservancy management where the communities actually manage their natural resources and they’re able to benefit from that management as well. We’ve been very active in trying to help develop these kinds of initiatives throughout other areas in Africa as well.

Our human-wildlife conflict laws are different from most countries. In many countries people get compensation if they lose their livestock [to wildlife]. And Namibia won’t do that because we believe that you’re developing farmers that are just losing their livestock to get paid. Namibia has tried to be very proactive by having conservancies, by having things like livestock guarding dogs, and good livestock and wildlife management training programs, so that the farmers actually benefit through having access to their own wildlife through ecotourism.

Is there a lot of overlap in the techniques you use and those used by others in the United States and Europe who are working on reducing conflict between livestock and other predators like wolves?

Yes. The livestock guarding dog program started in Oregon and that was back in the middle ’70s and early ’80s, where I learned about it. Now our programs [in Namibia] have been going on since the early 1990s and we have spread the word. We published all of our data. People monitor what we do very closely. We work with a Turkish breed called the Anatolian Shepherd and Kangal dogs and they’ve been used for about 5,000 years. I went to Turkey and spent a lot of time learning about how the dogs work from the Turkish herders and they usually have three dogs — a female and two males. The female wakes up and she barks, and the males are huge and go after whatever might be around, but also their bark is loud.

You have to have enough dogs to protect against wolves because wolves are also a pack animal. And so for us, cheetahs aren’t a pack animal, leopards aren’t a pack animal. So we can actually work with individual dogs with herds up to 200 to 300 animals and have great success.

But we also encourage the use of herders as well. I think a lot of people in America don’t utilize [herders] a lot. They throw the animals out in the field, in the open range, and then blame anything that might happen. And I’m opposed to that. I am a livestock farmer myself, we have a dairy goat farm, and my agriculture background is linked together with the wildlife background. For me, I like my livestock and I like the wildlife and I like the predators. I feel it’s my responsibility to take care of my livestock through good management.

What kind of a threat does climate change pose?

Cheetahs are found in the most arid and semi-arid landscapes in all of the world with the poorest people on Earth. The animals are being affected through the loss of habitat and what’s going to happen with climate change. We’ve got much hotter days, longer days that are hot, less days that have rain. All of these are affecting and will affect the movements of the animals, the diseases that potentially animals can get and can carry — the prey base will be very much affected, and the grazing lands. That’s going to shift the migration of these animals and put them possibly in even more conflict with the human population.

Cheetah running. Photo: Jennifer Leigh Warner

I think livelihood development is a really critical part of the solution. [Too much grazing has led to] desertification, you end up with either sand deserts taking over, or with invasive bushes taking over, or thickened bushes. We’ve developed a whole habitat restoration project because here in Namibia, an area about the size of California is so thickly thorn-bushed that it has reduced the economic value for agriculture as well as the grazing lands for the wildlife and livestock.

We see this in many of the areas where cheetahs are found because of the effect of this overgrazing by the livestock. With this form of desertification — where you’ve got thickened thorn bushes, no grasses, and then the underground water is being taken up by these invasive bushes — it causes even a greater effect for climate change.

What kind of action would you like to see?

I don’t think anybody in the western world really cares about the poor people that I work with in the middle of Africa, but I really care about them and they don’t want to be poor starving farmers. It’s getting worse and worse. We are helping develop alternative livelihoods and funding to assist greater wildlife and livestock management techniques to help the people get out of poverty.

Then we can have more habitats where animals like the cheetah can live, and when you end up with a top predator, like a cheetah, you end up with a much greater amount of biodiversity.

Often these arid landscapes are called “dead lands,” but they’re only dead because they’re overgrazed and the biodiversity isn’t there. We really need to re-establish biodiversity and it can be done, but we first need to reduce the impact on the land by people. And that revolves around poverty reduction plans, education and the development of conservancies.

I think that the cheetah can be an icon — it can help people accept predators on a worldwide basis, but we just need to understand that we can live together.

Previously in The Revelator:

Is the Jaguarundi Extinct in the United States?

The post Saving Africa’s Most Endangered Big Cat appeared first on The Revelator.

Categories: H. Green News

La Via Campesina : International Peasant Movement - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 04:50

India’s capital city, New Delhi, is once again on the edge.

Thousands of farmers from the neighboring state of Punjab are marching toward the metropolis, demanding a legal assurance of a minimum support price for their crops. With national elections looming in a couple of months, the ruling coalition is concerned that a large-scale mobilization akin to the one seen in 2020 could spell trouble for them. Farmers are convinced that governments only heed their demands around election time. And so, the march continues.

On February 13th, at the Shambu border between Haryana and Punjab, marching farmers were met with tear gas and rubber bullets. Closer to the national capital, media reports depict main arterial roads fortified with iron fences, metal rings, and nails on the ground. Farmers liken the area to a war zone and question such tactics in a nation that prides itself on its democratic values. Local workers who rely on the route to commute between their workplaces and homes now trek several miles daily as vehicular traffic is halted.

Leaders of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), which spearheaded the historic 2020 protests, have clarified that they are not organizing the current march. Instead, it is organized by groups once part of the 2020 mobilizations but have since broken away to operate independently from the larger SKM coalition. Nonetheless, the SKM has defended everyone’s right to protest and repeated their call for a one-day nationwide strike by farmers and trade unions on February 16th, especially in the rural areas. The unions calling for this national strike have demanded pensions for farmers, minimum support price for crops, implementation of the old pension scheme, and the withdrawal of the amendment of labour laws.

Beneath the surface of these details and intricacies lies the dire state of Indian agriculture today.

Between 1991 and 2011, nearly 15 million farmers abandoned farming to seek other means of livelihood. While data for the last decade remains unavailable, most Indian cities have witnessed a significant influx of laborers, indicating rural distress. One major factor rendering agriculture unviable for many small-scale Indian farmers is the meager returns they receive.

In a 2022 interview with Thirdpole, Devinder Sharma, a food and trade analyst, elucidated this issue, citing a study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development that revealed stagnant farm gate prices for agricultural products from 1985 to 2005, adjusted for inflation. Another study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations estimated that Indian farmers lost USD 600 billion from 2000 to 2016. Sharma highlighted the stark reality that, in 2016, the annual per capita earnings from farming in 17 states—half the country—amounted to less than USD 270, or less than USD 23 per month.

Nalla Gounder, a farmer from Tamil Nadu, poignantly asks, “In just the last decade alone, the selling price of coconut has halved while the cost of farm labor has doubled. How do you expect farmers to survive?”

The escalating frequency of climate catastrophes, including hailstorms, untimely rains, prolonged droughts, and dwindling water sources, further compounds the challenges of achieving a successful harvest. Over the past 30 years, input costs have steadily risen while selling prices have failed to keep pace. Consequently, half of rural farming households find themselves in debt, with suicides tragically becoming a desperate means of escape.

Farmers are at their wits’ end. Clinging to their last straws for survival, they firmly believe that a legally guaranteed minimum support price would, at the very least, prevent their produce from being sold at suppressed prices.

However, enacting such a law is easier said than done. India’s membership in the World Trade Organization has exposed its public food security and procurement programs to repeated attacks from export-oriented countries, particularly the United States, labeling them as ‘trade-distorting.’ These countries view any domestic support offered to Indian farmers as a hindrance to market access. Even proposed special safeguard mechanisms aimed at enabling national governments to control the influx of cheap imports have been contentious points during agricultural negotiations at the WTO. For developing nations like India, the domestic support they provide to farmers – including the minimum support price – is crucial for sustaining rural economies.

Caught in this quagmire, farmers bear the brunt of the situation.

The existing minimum support price offered by the Indian government covers only 23 crops, and farmers have long argued that these prices barely cover production costs. They advocate for a redefined methodology for determining cost of cultivation by including rentals and interest for owned land and fixed capital assets. They demand that the minimum support price is at least 50% higher than this revised input cost. A 2006 report, often referred to as the Swaminathan Commission Report in India, recommended that the MSP should be at least 50% higher than the weighted average cost of production. However, this recommendation has remained unaddressed.

In Bangalore, during the commemoration of the 88th birth anniversary of legendary peasant leader Prof. M D Nanjudaswamy in Karnataka, Rakesh Tikat of the Bhartiya Kisan Union, a prominent figure from the 2020 agitation, emphasized the importance of implementing the recommendations made by M S Swaminathan, rather than merely honoring him posthumously.

“It is good that the government has honored M S Swaminathan with the highest civilian honor posthumously. But what is more important for farmers is that governments implement what M S Swaminathan recommended, and to turn it into a legal guarantee.”

1 tractor, 1 village, 15 people, 10 days – the formula that sustained a peasant movement for 13 months in India

In 2020, the Indian government introduced three contentious farm laws, which farmers alleged aimed to corporatize the agricultural system without addressing the root causes of distress. The vehement protests led by farmers for 13 months forced the Indian government to withdraw these laws.

Tikait outlined their strategy during the protests, “To protest for 13 months was not easy, as it stretched across many seasons. So we followed a formula where each village would send one tractor carrying 15 people to the Delhi border and after 10 days they would return while another batch from the village replaced them. It was a show of strength and solidarity by India’s farmers and it emerged from this connected reality of falling incomes and increased expenses.”

Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait addressing the farmers in Karnataka on 13th February

While withdrawing the laws in 2021, the Indian government also pledged to address the issue of Minimum Support Price, yet no progress has been made since.

Speaking to the TRT World during the commemoration on February 13th, Chukki Nanjudaswamy from the Karnataka State Farmers Association lamented the lack of government action regarding rural distress and the absence of legislation guaranteeing the minimum support price. “We have been the victims of a neo-liberal system and climate catastrophes. No governments are looking into it. By now they should have at least held a serious discussion in the Parliament. More than 25% of our population have left rural areas in the last decade.”

Devinder Sharma, also present at the ceremony in Bangalore, highlighted the global nature of the crisis among peasant farmers, citing ongoing protests in Europe demanding fair prices for produce and greater state support for agroecological transition. He warned against the dangers of globalization, echoing Prof. M D Nanjundaswamy’s earlier warnings about its implications for farmers.

“From Europe to India, small-scale food producers are taking to the streets to protest against attempts to render agriculture unviable for them. As the global trend shifts toward industrial agriculture and ag-tech, with large-scale food tech factories emerging, the traditional model of farming faces existential threats.”, he said. Sharma also pointed out instances of lab-made proteins replacing real ones, such as the recent approval of lab-grown meat in the US. He warned that this trend is pushing agriculture toward a dystopian future where farmers are marginalized, echoing concerns raised by Prof. M D Nanjundaswamy decades ago.

“The plight of farmers in India is a microcosm of a global crisis affecting small-scale farmers worldwide. In 2020, Indian farmers showed their resilience by protesting for 13 months. We can do that again, and our villages are closely watching what is going on. The government can bring a resolution in no time if they sincerely wish to. Just bring the law that assures MSP,” reminds Yudhvir Singh of the Bhartiya Kisan Union, who also attended the birth anniversary event of Prof M D Nanjudaswamy.

From left peasant leaders Yudhvir Singh, Anasuyamma, Rakesh Tikait and T Gangadhar pay respect to Prof MD Nanjudaswamy at the commemoration event in Bangalore on the 13th of February

“Prof MDN had this uncanny ability to connect global struggles, as he recognized the shared realities of peasant farmers everywhere. He was among the founders of the global peasant movement La Via Campesina thirty years ago, an excellent organizer who brought many farmers’ movements together. Today is a day to remember his legacy as we witness once again this global mobilization by small-scale farmers everywhere for better prices.” Prof Ravivarma Kumar ex-attorney general of Karnataka and also the current International Coordination Committee member of La Via Campesina remembered the legendary peasant leader.

The Karnataka State Farmers Association (KRRS) that organized the Bangalore event also issued a resolution, calling upon the Indian government to protect its public food stock and procurement programs, and domestic support on farm inputs at the 13th WTO Ministerial to be held in Abu Dhabi later this month. “India should resist pressure from these developed countries, as it could compromise the food security of other developing nations, including India itself. To ensure the sovereignty of farmers, as advocated and championed by the KRRS since the 1990s, we demand keeping agriculture outside WTO negotiations.” the resolution reads.

The state farmers’ association also condemned Israel’s attack on Gaza. “We demand and call upon our government to intervene and support the rallying global call for peace in Gaza, demand an immediate end to this war and ask Israel for immediate withdrawal of its troops and save the 5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank from starvation, death and murder.”

The resolution also called for strict prohibition of experimentation and field trials of all transgenic crops, including transgenic Herbicide Tolerant mustard. “Introducing herbicide-tolerant mustard into farmers’ fields under the guise of hybrid technology is misleading, especially when non-genetically modified hybrids are readily available. The Karnataka government can set a strong precedent for other states by banning transgenic mustard and all other GM crops in the state and urging the central government to revoke its earlier approval.”, it stated.

Cover Image: File photo from 2021 protests

The post Indian farmers are protesting again. Legal guarantee on Minimum Support Price is the key demand appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Categories: A1. Favorites, A3. Agroecology

Pittsburgh Green New Deal - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 04:33

e699 สล็อต

e699 สล็อต เว็บไซต์รายใหญ่ในเอเชีย ที่มาพร้อมการบริการเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ลิขสิทธิ์แท้ ชนะรางวัลง่าย โอกาสในการรับเงินรางวัลที่สูงยิ่งขึ้น ลงเดิมพันเล่นเกมได้ทุกค่าย หลากหลายรูปแบบ หลากหลายความสนุก รับโบนัสรางวัลแจ็คพอตสุดคุ้มได้อย่างจุใจไม่อั้น เพลิดเพลินไปพร้อมกับความสนุกของเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ได้แบบครบวงจร มากกว่า 1000+ เกม รวมเกมดังชั้นนำ ชนะรางวัลได้รัวๆ ไม่จำกัดทุนในการลงเดิมพัน

จะมีทุนน้อย หรือมีทุนหนา ก็สามารถเข้ามาร่วมสนุก ลงเดิมพัน สะสมเงินรางวัล ทำกำไรในการเล่นเกมได้แบบไม่อั้น อัพเดทความสนุกของเกมใหม่ๆ ให้เลือกเล่นก่อนใครทุกวัน ไม่มีการล็อคผลรางวัล ไม่มีการล็อคยูสเซอร์ อีกทั้งยังไม่มีประวัติในการโกงอีกด้วย e699 ของเรา เป็นเว็บตรง ไม่ผ่านเอเย่นต์ ที่มีใบเซอร์การันตีการเปิดใช้งาน และมีฐานการเงินที่มั่นคง มีความปลอดภัย พร้อมทั้งยังสำรองเงินจ่ายรางวัล ให้กับผู้เล่นทุกท่านแบบไม่อั้น

ในปัจจุบัน เว็บไซต์ของเรามีการพัฒนาระบบการเข้าใช้งาน พัฒนาระบบเว็บไซต์ให้ดียิ่งขึ้นอย่างต่อเนื่อง มั่นคง ปลอดภัย พร้อมทั้งยังมีความสะดวก รวดเร็วทันใจมากยิ่งขึ้นอีกด้วย เข้าใช้งานได้อย่างมั่นใจ ลงเดิมพันเล่นเกมได้อย่างต่อเนื่อง ระบบการฝาก – ถอนเงินที่ดีที่สุด ไม่กำหนดขั้นต่ำ ไม่จำกัดจำนวนครั้ง และยังสามารถเข้ามาร่วมสนุก ทำรายการฝากถอนได้อย่างครอบคลุม ไม่ต้องมีบัญชีธนาคาร ก็สามารถทำรายการได้อย่างง่ายดาย

ฝากถอนเงินรวดเร็วทันใจ ระบบออโต้มั่นคง e699 สล็อต

เข้าใช้งานได้อย่างเพลิดเพลิน เล่นเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ได้หลากหลาย มากกว่า 1000+ เกม โอกาสในการชนะรางวัลสูง รับเงินรางวัลสุดคุ้มจากการเล่นเกมไปใช้ได้แบบไม่อั้น ไม่จำกัดทุนในการลงเดิมพัน เล่นเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ได้ทุกค่ายเกมแบบครบวงจร ไม่ว่าจะเป็นค่ายใหม่ หรือค่ายเก่า ก็มีโอกาสในการชนะรางวัลสูง รับเงินรางวัลสุดคุ้มจากการเล่นเกมได้แบบไม่อั้น เกมสล็อตออนไลน์คุณภาพดี ระบบไหลลื่น ไม่มีสะดุด ไม่มีปัญหากวนใจ เล่นได้อย่างเพลิดเพลินไม่มีเบื่อ

การันตีเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ลิขสิทธิ์แท้ จากค่ายผู้พัฒนาเกมโดยตรง100% ชนะรางวัลได้รัวๆ ถอนเงินรางวัลสุดคุ้มจากการเล่นเกมไปใช้ได้จริง กับเว็บตรง มั่นคง ปลอดภัย ถูกกฎหมาย และมีใบเซอร์การันตีการเปิดใช้งาน e699สล็อต เข้าร่วมเล่นเกม ลงเดิมพันได้ทุกวัน รองรับการเข้าใช้งานทุกแพลตฟอร์ม ทั้งระบบคอมพิวเตอร์ และโทรศัพท์มือถือ เปิดให้บริการทุกวันตลอด 24 ชั่วโมง

ลงเดิมพันได้อย่างอิสระ เลือกเบทเดิมพันในการเล่นเกมได้อย่างสม่ำเสมอ ปรับเพิ่มลดเบทเดิมพันในการเล่นเกมได้ตามต้องการตลอดเวลา โดยจะมีเบทเดิมพันในการเล่นเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ ที่เริ่มต้นเพียงแค่ 1 บาทเท่านั้น สำหรับการลงเดิมพันเล่นเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ ทุกท่านไม่ต้องกังวลเรื่องปัญหาทุนน้อย หรือทุนหนา ก็สามารถเข้ามาร่วมสนุก ปรับเบทเดิมพันในการเล่นเกมได้ด้วยตนเองได้ตามต้องการอย่างเพลิดเพลิน ตลอดในการเข้าใช้งาน

ทำกำไร สร้างรายได้จากการเล่นเกม ถอนเงินรางวัลสุดคุ้มมาใช้ได้แบบไม่อั้น กับระบบการฝากถอนเงินสุดทันสมัย เข้าใช้งานง่าย และใช้เวลาที่รวดเร็วทันใจมากยิ่งขึ้น สะดวกต่อการเข้าใช้งานเล่นเกมของผู้เล่นอย่างครอบคลุม ไม่ต้องมีบัญชีธนาคาร ก็สามารถแจ้งทำรายการฝากถอนเงินได้อย่างง่ายดาย ทำรายการได้ผ่านระบบออโต้ ที่มีความมั่นคง และมีความปลอดภัยสูง โดยทุกท่าน สามารถแจ้งทำรายการฝาก – ถอน ได้ด้วยตนเองได้อย่างอิสระ

โดยไม่ต้องรอคิว และแจ้งการฝากถอนเงิน ไปที่เจ้าหน้าที่แอดมินให้ยุ่งยาก และเสียเวลา ไม่กำหนดเงินขั้นต่ำในการฝากถอน ไม่ต้องทำยอดเทิร์น รับเงินรางวัลได้เต็มจำนวน เปิดให้ทำรายการตลอด 24 ชั่วโมง โดยไม่จำกัดจำนวนครั้ง อีกทั้งยังมีการบริการ การดูแลผู้เล่นทุกท่าน ผ่านเจ้าหน้าที่แอดมินอย่างครอบคลุม และใส่ใจตลอดในการเข้าใช้งาน หากมีปัญหาในการเล่นเกม และการเข้าใช้งาน ก็สามารถแจ้งไปที่เจ้าหน้าที่แอดมินบนเว็บไซต์ของเราได้ทันที

สำหรับท่านใด ที่ยังไม่สะดวกใช้บัญชีธนาคาร ในการฝาก – ถอน ในการเล่นเกม เว็บไซต์สุดทันสมัย มาตรฐานสากล เข้าใช้งานง่าย e699สล็อต ก็ยังได้มีการพัฒนา ให้ทุกท่าน สามารถฝากถอนเงินได้ง่ายๆ ผ่านระบบออโต้ โดยจะรองรับบัญชีธนาคารทั่วโลก และบัญชี true wallet สะดวก รวดเร็วทันใจ มั่นคง ปลอดภัย เข้าใช้งานง่าย ชนะรางวัลได้ไม่อั้น เล่นเกมผ่านระบบออนไลน์ ช่องทางการสร้างรายได้ที่ง่ายที่สุด

รวมความสนุกที่หลากหลาย เล่นเกมได้ทุกค่ายไม่จำกัดทุน

เพลิดเพลินไปพร้อมกับความสนุกของเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ รับเงินรางวัลสุดคุ้มไปใช้ได้แบบไม่อั้น ถอนเงินรางวัลมาใช้ได้จริง ไม่มีประวัติการโกง พร้อมทั้งยังมีการพัฒนาระบบเว็บไซต์ พัฒนาระบบการเข้าใช้งานให้ดียิ่งขึ้นอย่างต่อเนื่อง e699 สล็อต เว็บตรงมาตรฐานสากล เว็บไซต์รายใหญ่ในเอเชีย

ลงเดิมพันไม่จำกัดทุน ด้วยเบทเดิมพันในการเล่นเกม ที่เริ่มต้นเพียงแค่ 1 บาทเท่านั้น โอกาสในการชนะรางวัลสูง การันตีเกมลิขสิทธิ์แท้ ฝากถอนเงินระบบออโต้ มั่นคง และปลอดภัย เข้าใช้งานได้อย่างมั่นใจ เล่นเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ได้หลากหลายครบวงจร อัพเดทความสนุกของเกมใหม่ๆทุกวัน ลงเดิมพันได้อย่างต่อเนื่อง

เข้าร่วมสนุก เล่นเกม ทำกำไร สร้างรายได้จากการเล่นเกมได้ทุกที่ ทุกเวลา ร่วมลงเดิมพันได้อย่างเพลิดเพลิน ชนะรางวัลได้อย่างจุใจ เลือกเล่นเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ ถอนเงินได้จริง เลือกเว็บตรง e699สล็อต

Credit สล็อตเว็บตรง

อ่านบทความน่าสนใจเพิ่มเติม

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Categories: B3. EcoSocialism

Resilience - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 04:33

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Resilience - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 04:03

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Resilience - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 03:48

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Mining.Com - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 03:44

A search for nine workers buried after a landslide hit SSR Mining’s (TSX: SSRM)(ASX: SSR) gold mine in eastern Turkey continued on Wednesday, the interior minister said, while local media reported that four people, including the operation’s field manager, were taken into custody as part of an investigation.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said that police and military teams, mine rescuers and volunteers, totalling more than 1,700 search and rescue personnel, were on the ground to look for the missing workers. Five of them are believed to have been in a container hut, three in a vehicle and one in a truck, the minister said.

The incident happened on Tuesday at the Çöpler gold mine, 80%-owned by US-based SSR Mining, which suspended operations. The landslide, described by the company as a “large slip on the heap leach pad”, caused shares to lose more than than 50% of their value in both the New York and Toronto exchanges on Tuesday.

Security footage shared on X shows a massive mound of soil, which authorities said had been processed for gold and piled on the hills, speedily crumble and flow into the valley in a deluge of earth and rocks, prompting mining trucks nearby to escape.

İliç Altın madeninde meydana gelen toprak kaymasında yeni görüntüler ortaya çıktı pic.twitter.com/PUypBnmfSM

— Politic Türk (@politicturk) February 14, 2024

Turkish authorities have launched a probe to determine the cause of the landslide and the safety conditions of the mine.

Cyanide leak fears

Environmental groups fear a cyanide and sulphuric acid leak, used in the process of gold extraction, could reach the Euphrates River, which flows from Turkey to Syria and Iraq.

Their worries stem from cyanide leak at the mine in 2020, caused by a burst pipe, which forced the mine’s suspension. Çöpler reopened two years later after the company was fined and a cleanup operation was completed.

“No contamination has been detected for now,” the Environment Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Turkey’s mining industry hasbeen marred by a series of accidentsin recent years. In 2022, a coal mine explosion killed 41 workers. But the country’s worst mining disaster in record happened in 2014 also at a coal mine, which resulted in 301 workers dead.

The government is facing criticism from opposition parties and industry groups for ignoring Copler’s activities after the 2022 accident that also caused a cyanide spill.

“The government has preferred to side with mine owners, not with citizens,” Meral Aksener, leader of the opposition IYI Party, said in Ankara on Wednesday. “I specifically warned them in 2022 about the danger this mine poses, but they chose to turn a deaf ear.”

The Çöpler gold mine, in operations since 2010, is run by private company Anagold. It produced 56,768 ounces of gold in the third quarter of 2023 and is SSR’s second-largest producing gold mine.

Categories: J2. Fossil Fuel Industry

Green European Journal - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 03:26

Poland’s new Prime Minister Donald Tusk has promised a liberalisation of the country’s abortion laws, which are some of the most restrictive on the European continent. His path is a sharp contrast to the previous government’s anti-abortion crackdown. Yet, even as he commits to the issue publicly, the campaign he took to get there reveals that reproductive freedom in Poland remains an issue many lawmakers use only instrumentally.

Hot water, running over a pregnant belly, under beige and purple shower tiles. An orange cat, crawling through the litter box. In 2023, only a couple months after abortion, doula Wiktoria Szymczak moved to Kraków from Warsaw. She was helping a stranger end a pregnancy in her apartment bathroom. Earlier in the day, Szymczak had got a call from a client who needed more help than anticipated, whom we will call Agata to protect her privacy. Previously, Szymczak had told her how to pursue one of the few legal methods left for obtaining an abortion within the country. It is still legal to go online and order abortion pills for yourself in the mail through a dealer based outside Poland (Szymczak recommends medical non-profits like “Women Help Women”). Agata went online and bought the pills to end her pregnancy.

But “she miscalculated”, Szymczak recalls. The pregnancy was further along than they thought, and they were going to need more medication to end it. “As an abortion doula, I obviously have the pills at home,” she says. But Szymczak is also a newly-practicing lawyer, and she brings her fresh knowledge of Poland’s legal landscape into her activism. So as a doula who collaborates with other abortion activists, she had a strict rule for herself and others on her team: you never give out your own abortion pills to a client in Poland. “You hold their hand or support them while they order their own.” When you give the pills to someone else, you are putting unregistered drugs into Polish circulation – and that crosses a legal line. “I am always the one making sure nobody does stupid things that can get them arrested,” she says.

At one’s own risk

Agata had already taken mifepristone and some misoprostol, but she needed more of the second pill. Obtaining more would take at least two more days. On the phone, Agata was a mess, erratic, and “very shaky emotionally”. Szymczak did not want her to wait any longer. Agata’s abortion would have to happen at Szymczak’s apartment, in a quiet corner of Kraków at the end of a tramline.

Szymczak called a friend from the network to confirm the correct dosage, telling her to keep their lawyer’s phone number on hand. Szymczak did not know Agata beyond a few chats they had online. And Agata’s boyfriend had become increasingly controlling, which meant Szymczak didn’t know how he would react after the abortion was done. Would he call the police? “Don’t worry,” Szymczak’s friend joked. “We’ll print t-shirts for your court date like we did for Justyna.” In March 2023, Warsaw abortion-rights activist Justyna Wydrzyńska was sentenced to eight months of community service for helping a pregnant woman get abortion pills.

The next morning, Szymczak and her partner made Agata breakfast and drove her home. “The whole time I was thinking that I might go to jail or I might get arrested,” Szymczak says now. She still might, in theory. In Poland, the law that saw Wydrzyńska convicted less than a year ago remains in force. Poland has a near-total ban on abortion with exceptions if the pregnancy is the result of a criminal act (such as rape) or if the pregnant person’s life is at risk.

Szymczak says she saw women denied hospital abortions, despite the fact that their situations met the legal requirements. A “conscientious objection to abortion” law means doctors do not need to perform or refer patients for an abortion if this contradicts their religious views. And other doctors often fear strict readings of the legal code that could penalise them if they decide too quickly to protect their patient from a dangerous pregnancy.

Szymczak is sharing her story because she is tired of waiting for something to change. “[Agata] was lucky. And I was lucky,” she says. “Lucky that I had [the pills] at the time, and … lucky that I was willing to do this.” She does not want luck to decide the outcome anymore. “Women in Poland deserve to go to a doctor, say that they don’t want to continue the pregnancy, and be given all of the pills that they need. If we look at other European countries, somehow it’s okay for women there to be treated like humans.”

Difficult history

For more than 30 years, Poland has been home to a ban on abortion with very few exceptions, leaving people like Szymczak to fill the gap. Under the conservative Law and Justice party which ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023, those restrictions were even further tightened both on paper and in practice. A 2021 court decision forbade abortion due to significant foetal abnormality, and in one high-profile case, a woman who miscarried found prosecutors for the Constitutional Tribunalgoing through her sewage system to find the foetus.

But over the past few months, a waterfall of changes suggests a new day in Poland may be coming for supporters of abortion rights. In his first address as prime minister in December 2023, Donald Tusk promised “a programme so that every Polish woman feels a change in the treatment of motherhood, protection of mothers and access to legal abortion.” And just a day before he spoke, the European Court of Human Rights declared that the law against abortions in the case of foetal abnormalities infringed on an individual’s right to privacy. Responding to the decision, Federa, the organisation that fights for reproductive rights in Poland, said that it was only a first step in their work to liberalise Polish law: “We will not rest until every woman in Poland is guaranteed the right to decide about her life.”

But getting to this point has not been easy – and many feminists say they will view these political promises with suspicion until they see actual results. This is largely due to a long history in which abortion rights have been used as a political weapon at the expense of women and their bodies. Polish feminist, Sławomira Walczewska, traces this back to the last days of communist rule.

Walczewska remembers a famous off-the-record human rights conference in the 1980s, where hundreds of people from around the world had gathered in Poland for workshops and panels talking about human rights. But when she went to a discussion on women’s rights and abortion – when abortion rights had already faced increasing restrictions and anti-choice mobilisation – the room was empty. Even the panellists decided to go elsewhere. Walczewska remembers her indignation. At the closing plenary – filled with hundreds of people – she called out the organisers, demanding that the next conference take women’s issues seriously.

“I was a nobody in this space full of really great activists,” she says. Some of them had gone to prison for years over their views, a badge of honour in the pro-democracy circles; she could feel herself shaking.

Walczewska remembers the applause from the audience. She also remembers the chairman’s glare. “He was a first-class activist for human rights and would never say that he is misogynist. It would be too primitive for him,” she says. But his face was boiling with rage. “If such beautiful people don’t want to hear anything about women’s rights, what about the barbarians – the people who are openly misogynist?”

The compromise

For Walczewska, this is the story of the Polish approach to women’s rights over and over again: useful until they are not. By 1989, only one of the many women who had organised anti-communist newspapers and political activity, Grażyna Staniszewska, was sitting at Poland’s Round Table to discuss the country’s democratic reforms.

This is the story of the Polish approach to women’s rights over and over again: useful until they are not.

In 1989, under the last communist government, a draft bill making abortion completely illegal was presented to the legislature. However, the politicians agreed not to debate the abortion issue until after the new elections. Historian Sylwia Kuźma explains that the “Polish historiographical consensus” around the time frames this bill as a communist effort to “cause quarrel within the opposition,” just as democratic institutions took their first steps. Thus, the refusal to argue the issue became a symbol of careful democratic leaders refusing to take the communist bait. However, this decision can also be read another way – setting aside a discussion that would have been relevant to the democratic experience of half the population, all in the name of something perceived to be more important.

The late Maria Janion, a leading Polish literary critic, feminist, and member of the Solidarity movement who had been instrumental in bringing the new government into power, was one of the people arguing the abortion debate must be shelved for later. In the respected Polish dailyGazeta Wyborcza, she remembered the resulting betrayal: “I claimed that Solidarity must first fight for the freedom and independence of the whole society and then together we can take care of women’s issues. A few years later, Solidarity did take care of women’s issues and we know exactly what happened, and in what manner it did so.”

By 1992, under a new democratic government, women were in the streets protesting against the draft bill making abortions illegal. They collected over a million signatures which demanded the lower chamber of the Polish parliament (Sejm) put the idea to a referendum. Women knew that public opinion was on their side, and probably, leaders of the legislature did too, because the referendum never happened. Instead, legislators earned the favour of the Catholic Church with a less extreme ban, only allowing abortions in a few extreme exceptions.

These tactics crossed party lines. Months after abortion was made illegal in 1993, the parties that introduced the law lost political power, and the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance party won control. For years, that party did nothing about abortion. Then in 1997, just before new elections were due, the leadership started talking about a return of abortion rights, Walczewska remembers. “‘Vote for us’ … It was very clear, just manipulative.” The ploy did not work. A liberal and conservative Polish Solidarity coalition government was voted in instead.

Twenty-six years later, Walczewska sees similarities between that past and the current situation. The Polish Solidarity coalition was dissolved in 2001. Two main rival parties were soon built from its ashes: the conservative Law and Justice, famously opposed to abortion rights, and the centrist Civic Platform. From 2015 to 2023, Law and Justice governed Poland and became famous for its increasing rollbacks on social issues. In 2023, a diverse coalition of parties came together and cobbled enough votes together to boot Law and Justice out of power. This win was thanks in part to the promise by the new prime minister, Donald Tusk, to reverse tightened restrictions on reproductive rights and make abortions up to 12 weeks legal in Poland for the first time since the fall of communism. This was a pragmatic move on Tusk’s part. After Law and Justice had eliminated one of the few legal exceptions for abortion – severe foetal deformity – forcing women in their second trimester to head out of the country for healthcare, the 2020 and 2021 “Black March” women’s strikes had made it clear: abortion was an issue that many voters would mobilise around.

Instrumentalising women’s rights

During the 2023 campaign, Tusk had called on women to vote for his party, Civic Platform, with abortion specifically in mind. Yet in November last year, when Tusk signed a deal to govern alongside more centrist and leftist parties in a new democratic coalition, abortion rights were nowhere to be seen in their first shared mandate. Journalist Anna Kowalczyk was not surprised: “Women’s rights are treated very instrumentally and they are being sacrificed first when there is a need of sacrifice.”

Politicos will insist that the coalition was a fragile one, and Tusk’s party did not get enough votes to demand a pro-abortion turn once he took office. He had to make friends with more right-leaning agrarian and economy-focused groups, in order to keep the nationalist Law and Justice Party from taking control once again.

But a look at Tusk’s earlier campaign trail tells a longer story of disregard for women’s voices. At one prominent rally courting the women’s vote, only one female speaker was listed – the Civic Platform’s youngest candidate – and even here, Tusk got her name wrong. And while ostensibly, the slightly broader Civic Coalition (which includes smaller parties that run on a shared ticket with Civic Platform) allowed its members to have diverse views on abortion rights, including anti-abortion views, one feminist was booted from the coalition for saying that, in her belief, abortion should be allowed on demand. Instead, the campaign focused its energy on pushing social media videos of Donald Tusk winking and reclining on a couch, posing as a caring grandfather or a grey-haired sex symbol. Women were voters – objects for campaigns to pursue – but they were not political subjects worth engaging in a respectful way.

Women were voters – objects for campaigns to pursue – but they were not political subjects worth engaging in a respectful way.

To understand Poland’s approach to abortion rights today, one has to understand the impact of communist history on even the country’s most liberal periods around the issue. In 1932, Poland became the second country after the Soviet Union to legalise abortion in extreme situations such as female health or surviving rape. After Joseph Stalin’s death allowed the socialist bloc countries to turn away from his more extreme pronatalist policies, the country expanded legal abortion access to include “difficult living conditions”, and deaths from abortion plummeted in Poland, from 255 cases a year to 12.

Yet, in the official discourse, this access was never framed as an individual right, explains Agata Ignaciuk, history of medicine professor at University of Grenada. Instead, “it was a healthcare procedure to solve a problem” – a problem for the family or for the common good. Ignaciuk says that in other countries at the time, feminists were arguing for abortion rights to be codified. “In Poland, it was more like, ‘well, abortion should be legal, but it’s a necessary evil and it is dangerous, potentially harmful, it could lead to infertility.’ Even at its most accessible,” she explains.

One 1988 survey found that even while 0.6 per cent of women approved of abortion morally, 37 per cent said they would have an abortion if they did not want a child. Looking at the numbers, Małgorzata Fuszara in the journalSignsnoted that one must not assume “that women who have abortions approve of them or believe they are not sinning.”

In Ignaciuk’s research, she found that magazines and medical literature rarely swayed from the “fixed framing” of abortion as best done under legal conditions, but still dangerous and ideally avoided – a last resort. The goal with legal abortion was to prevent death, not provide female autonomy. She says this longstanding perception made it difficult for abortion advocates to stand up for abortion rights during the fall of communism, when the draft bill making most abortions illegal came into play. “It has an impact on how there is this … difficulty to develop this idea that abortion is a woman’s right, a human right,” she says. “And make it resonate with the broader society.”

The question remains: what to do about this now? Szymczak, the abortion doula, says that after decades of restrictions on abortion, Polish healthcare workers are sometimes stuck in the past. In her doula practice, she hears from women who go to hospital after a miscarriage or problems with a pharmacological abortion. Too often, she says, they’re subjected to hospital procedures that feel punitive and, when not medically indicated, can add needless risk. Legal changes will need to be followed by support for doctors, like new equipment and wider training on the latest practices.

Before that point, another question is how to get there. In the major cities that are his strongholds, the prime minister is under immense social pressure to implement reforms. The Sejm’s YouTube channel now has 650,000 subscribers and many Poles watch the proceedings closely. In January, Tusk told the country’s top television stations he would put forward a bill legalising abortion for the first 12 weeks “with some conditions”. More conservative-leaning politicians in his coalition have argued instead for a return to the so-called 1993 compromise, or for the referendum that feminists fought for three decades ago. Szymczak does not want to see either of these alternatives. She says public opinion is not always reflected in a referendum because “people on the ‘winning’ side will often stay home.”

Besides, she argues, the time is over for gathering public opinion on a pregnant person’s individual decisions. For many women, technological and social shifts have made abortion even more personal than it has always been. It is often not even a “decision between a woman and her doctor” anymore, as western feminists used to say in the 1990s. Now it is possible, with an internet connection and a mailing address, to do this completely on your own. Still, people like Szymczak do not want women to feel alone doing it.

This article was first published inNew Eastern Europe 1-2/2024: Elections Without Choice.

Categories: H. Green News

DRILL OR DROP? - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 03:12

Europa Oil & Gas has announced it has been given more time to explore for gas in a licence in North Yorkshire

Europa Oil & Gas PEDL343 (in yellow) and Cloughton-1 well. Source: UKOGL

In a statement, the company said the initial exploration term of its Petroleum Exploration and Development Licence near Scarborough, PEDL343, has been extended for two years to July 2026.

The industry regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority, has also extended the second, appraisal, term of PEDL343 to July 2028, the company said.

Europa said the extensions would allow it to continue ongoing work on the licence.

PEDL343 was granted in 2016, as part of the 14th onshore round. At the time, the regulator said the licence would target shale gas. The initial term had been expected to run until 2021 and the second term to 2026.

The Cloughton-1 well in PEDL343, drilled in 1986, flowed good quality gas at rates of up to 40,000 standard cubic feet per day, Europa reported. This could increase to 6 million standard cubic feet per day using what the company described as “correct completion techniques”.

The company has previously said on its website that it has identified a location for an appraisal well pad in PEDL343. It said:

“Europa regards Cloughton as a gas appraisal opportunity with the critical challenge being to obtain commercial flowrates from future production testing operations.”

Categories: G2. Local Greens

The Carbon Brief - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 03:00

As part of a long-running series profiling countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions, Carbon Brief looks at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) which, despite using hardly any fossil fuels, is one of the largest sources of emissions in Africa.

The DRC is home toaround 60%of the second-largest rainforest on the planet, as well as much of the world’slargest tropical peatland, the Cuvette Centrale.

While the country’s land and forests are still a carbon sink overall, human-caused land use changes release large volumes of carbon dioxide (CO2) and make the DRC the world’s 12th biggest greenhouse gas emitter, as of 2018.

This means the DRC occupies an unusual position. Despite its high emissions, the country faces widespread poverty and only one-fifth of the population has electricity access.

As a result, when only consideringfossil fuels and industry, it has the world’s lowest per-capita carbon footprint.

On the world stage, the government has styled the DRC as a “solution country” for climate change, due to its carbon-dense forests andwealthof minerals required for clean technologies. At the same time, the nation’s leaders are also pushing logging and oil exploration as much-needed sources of investment.

The DRC government has also made it clear that any efforts to preserve the nation’s rainforest and build low-carbon power will be heavily reliant on financial support from wealthier nations.

The DRC is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world when it comes to the impacts of climate change, and its preparedness is hampered by the lack of historical or current weather measurements.

Read the full article here

The post The Carbon Brief Profile: Democratic Republic of the Congo appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Categories: I. Climate Science

This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations, where Adam Federman is a reporting fellow.

On the morning of March 5, 2012, Debra White Plume received an urgent phone call. A convoy of large trucks transporting pipeline servicing equipment was attempting to cross the Pine Ridge Reservation near the town of Wanblee, South Dakota. White Plume, a prominent Lakota activist, immediately dropped what she was doing and headed to the site, where, within a few hours, a group of about 75 people from the Pine Ridge Reservation gathered.

More than a dozen cars formed a blockade along one of the roads that runs through the reservation. Plume and other activists were outspoken critics of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, part of a larger network carrying oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Many Indigenous nations in South Dakota, whose land the convoy was attempting to pass through on its way to the Canadian tar sands, fiercely objected to the project.

“We have resolutions opposing the whole entity of the tar sands oil mine and the Keystone XL pipeline,” White Plume declared after arriving at the site where the trucks had been stopped. “They need to turn around and go back. … They are not coming through here.” But the trucks were so big and unwieldy that the drivers said it would be dangerous, if not impossible, to turn them around.

The standoff in Wanblee was a relatively small protest compared to subsequent actions against the Keystone XL pipeline, which drew tens of thousands into the streets of Washington, D.C., and garnered national attention. Police arrested five activists, including White Plume (who died in 2020) and her husband, Alex White Plume Sr., on charges of disorderly conduct, and released them later that day. Beyond a few stories in Indigenous news outlets and regional papers, the protest hardly registered. Though tribes and landowners in the region had begun organizing around Keystone XL in 2011 and 2012, the pipeline had not yet become the galvanizing force for one of the largest campaigns in the history of the modern environmental movement.

Debra White Plume is arrested by U.S. Park Police in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., during a protest against the Keystone XL pipeline in September 2011. Luis M. Avarez / AP Photo

But the events in Wanblee did capture the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which began tracking Native groups campaigning against the pipeline in early 2012. According to documents obtained by Grist and Type Investigations through a Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI’s Minneapolis office opened a counterterrorism assessment in February 2012, focusing on actions in South Dakota, that continued for at least a year and may have led to the opening of additional investigations. These documents reveal that the FBI was monitoring activists involved in the Keystone XL campaign about a year earlier than previously known.

Their contents suggest that, long before the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines became national flashpoints, the federal government was already developing a sweeping law enforcement strategy to counter any acts of civil disobedience aimed at preventing fossil fuel extraction. And young, Native activists were among its first targets.

“The threat emerging … is evolving into one based on opposition to energy exploration related to any extractions from the earth, rather than merely targeting one project and/or one company,” the FBI noted in its description of the Wanblee blockade.

The 15-page file, which is heavily redacted, also describes Native American groups as a potentially dangerous threat and likens them to “environmental extremists” whose actions, according to the FBI, could lead to violence. The FBI acknowledged that Native American groups were engaging in constitutionally protected activity, including attending public hearings, but emphasized that this sort of civic participation might spawn criminal activity.

To back up its claims, the FBI cited a 2011 State Department hearing on the pipeline in Pierre, South Dakota, attended by a small group of Native activists. The FBI said the individuals were dressed in camouflage and had covered their faces with red bandanas, “train robber style.” According to the report, they were also carrying walking sticks and shaking sage, claiming to be “Wounded Knee Security of/for Mother Earth.”

“The Bureau is uncertain how the NA group(s) will act initially or subsequently if the project is approved,” the agency wrote.

Members of the Oglala Lakota Tribe participate in a protest against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline on October 13, 2014, in Pierre, South Dakota. Andrew Burton / Getty Images

The FBI also singled out the “Native Youth Movement,” which it described as a mix between a “radical militia and a survivalist group.” In doing so, it appeared to conflate a specific activist group originally founded in Canada in the 1990s with the broader array of young Native activists who opposed the pipeline decades later. Young activists would play an important role in the Keystone XL campaign and later on during protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, but the movement had little in common with militias or survivalists, terms typically used to describe far-right groups or those seeking to disengage from society.

The FBI declined to respond to questions for this story. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Minneapolis field office said the agency does not typically comment on FOIA releases and “lets the information contained in the files speak for itself.”

The FBI was not the only federal agency keeping tabs on Keystone XL pipeline protesters in the early years of the anti-pipeline movement. According to additional records obtained by Grist and Type Investigations, an obscure intelligence division within the U.S. State Department, which had jurisdiction over the pipeline because it crossed an international boundary, collected hundreds of pages of records on Keystone activists, landing one of them in jail on charges of trespassing (which were eventually dropped). Working in tandem with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, the State Department created an email account to “track all Keystone XL protest incidents” and monitored events in cities across the country, including in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, and Honolulu. The task force even highlighted candlelight vigils held in several major cities in 2014, describing one group of protesters as “peaceful, holding candles and signs.” These records reveal for the first time that the State Department was also involved in monitoring activists from late 2013 through the Obama administration’s decision to reject the pipeline in November 2015, though the case file wasn’t officially closed until November 2016.

A U.S. Park Police officer motions journalists away from a group of environmental activists gathered outside the White House in Washington, D.C., in August 2011. J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo

The State Department was especially interested in the work of environmental groups D.C. Action Lab and 350.org, as well as the “pledge of resistance,” organized by groups including CREDO, a mobile phone company that supports progressive causes, which called for activists to engage in civil disobedience to stop President Barack Obama from approving the Keystone XL pipeline. By late 2015, tens of thousands of people had signed the pledge and environmental groups held direct action trainings in dozens of cities. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security and state and local law enforcement agencies along the proposed pipeline route, according to previous reporting in The Guardian and other news outlets, were also intimately involved in investigating these activities, creating an unprecedented domestic surveillance network that is only now fully coming into focus.

In a written response, a State Department official said the purpose of tracking Keystone XL protesters was to “provide law enforcement with situational awareness of activities that could impact the security of State Department personnel, facilities, or activities.”

The department said it takes any potential threats against its personnel in the United States seriously but declined to comment on whether Keystone XL pipeline protesters had engaged in such behavior. In addition, the department declined to comment on why it singled out specific groups such as D.C. Action Lab and 350.org, as well as the CREDO campaign. The department said it is committed to upholding freedom of speech and assembly, “while also maintaining our security responsibility of protecting our facilities and U.S. personnel from those who may violate applicable laws.”

Environmental activists and attorneys who reviewed the new documents told Grist and Type Investigations that law enforcement’s approach to the Keystone XL campaign looked like a template for the increasingly militarized response to subsequent environmental and social justice campaigns — from efforts to block the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock to the ongoing protests against the police training center dubbed “Cop City” in Atlanta, Georgia, which would require razing at least 85 acres of urban forest.

Private security guards hold back dogs near Dakota Access Pipeline protesters near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, on September 3, 2016. Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images Protesters gathered in front of the New York City Public Library for a rally against the Dakota Access Pipeline are seized by police officers in March 2017. Andy Katz / Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

The FBI’s working thesis, outlined in the new documents, that “most environmental extremist groups” have historically moved from peaceful protest to violence has served as the basis for subsequent investigations. “It’s astonishing to me how such a broad concept basically paints every activist and protester as a future terrorist,” said Mike German, a former FBI special agent who is now a fellow at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice.

Sabrina King, an organizer with the conservation group Dakota Rural Action from 2012 to 2016, who went on to work for the ACLU in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming, spent nearly a month at Standing Rock. She believes the FBI’s characterization of the activist community — and Native youth in particular — as potential extremists helped set the stage for the increasingly aggressive government actions, including the use of FBI informants and heavily armed state and local police departments, directed at environmental protesters around the country in later years, from Standing Rock to the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota.

“This is the direct line to Standing Rock,” said King, who reviewed the newly obtained FBI documents. “None of that just happened. These law enforcement agencies had literally been training for [years] for Keystone, but then they used it on Dakota Access.”

In the years after the Wanblee blockade, the campaign opposing Keystone XL gained broad public appeal. It tapped into both local concerns over damage to land and water and also a rapidly growing national movement to end fossil fuel extraction altogether. It minted a multigenerational coalition of activists, many of whom had not been previously engaged in environmental politics.

The campaign also openly embraced nonviolent direct action, which marked a new chapter for some environmental organizations. In 2013, for example, the Sierra Club broke its long-standing prohibition on members engaging in civil disobedience — earning it a mention in the newly obtained FBI files. That year, activists, including the Sierra Club’s then-executive-director Michael Brune, used zip ties to attach themselves to the White House fence, resulting in mass arrests. The campaign included mainstream liberals who supported Obama and felt he could be persuaded to block the pipeline, as well as veterans of the environmental movement who had long been willing to engage in confrontational direct action.

From left to right: Social justice activist Julian Bond, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, and activist Bill McKibben are arrested as they refused to leave the sidewalk in front of the White House on February 13, 2013. Michael S. Williamson / The Washington Post via Getty Images

This alliance posed an unexpected threat to companies involved in fossil fuel extraction, including TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, and set off alarms within the federal government. Hundreds of pages of FBI and State Department files released through the Freedom of Information Act over the last decade highlight an increasingly close relationship between law enforcement agencies and the fossil fuel industry. The newly obtained documents show that, as early as 2012, the FBI was describing TransCanada, a multinational corporation headquartered in Calgary, Canada, as a “domain stakeholder” with direct access to the White House.

“Resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline was really the first pipeline campaign that I recall that there was organization on both sides of the fight,” said Lauren Regan, executive director of the nonprofit Civil Liberties Defense Center, which provided legal support to dozens of activists arrested during the campaign. “As we were collecting public records documents, organizers were shocked at how much running time TransCanada had with state and federal governments before any of them sensed that something was happening.”

Previously reported documents show that, less than two months after the FBI opened its investigation into Native activists, the agency held a “strategy meeting” with TransCanada and industry partners in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, an hour away from Cushing, where many of the nation’s major pipelines converge. (In 2012, Obama delivered a campaign speech in Cushing announcing that he would fast-track the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.) Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, the National Guard, and state and local police departments were also present. Indeed, the author of the February 2012 FBI file from the bureau’s Minneapolis field office noted that they would be attending the “regional working group meeting” to “ensure coordination and resource management between bureau field offices affected and the domain stakeholder, TransCanada Corporation.”

By the end of 2012, the FBI’s Houston field office also began collecting information for a domestic terrorism assessment that focused on Tar Sands Blockade, a scrappy coalition committed to nonviolent direct action, which had been at the center of the campaign to block construction of the pipeline in Texas. In one of their most prominent actions, Tar Sands Blockade had teamed up with a private landowner and set up tree-sits in the pathway of the pipeline. The FBI closely tracked protest activity among members of the group, one of whom later ended up being placed on a U.S. government watchlist for domestic flights, and cultivated at least one informant, according to files obtained in 2015 and previously reported in The Guardian. The investigation was initially opened without prior approval from the chief division counsel and the special agent in charge, in violation of FBI rules pertaining to “sensitive investigative matters” involving the activities of political organizations.

Protester Perry Graham climbs a flagpole to hang a sign to protest a pipeline by LyondellBasell, on March 27, 2013, in Houston. Nick de la Torre / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

Meanwhile, starting in late 2012, TransCanada began delivering its own briefing to local law enforcement agencies along the proposed pipeline route. The PowerPoint presentations, which included profiles of organizers at 350.org, Rainforest Action Network, and Tar Sands Blockade, encouraged law enforcement to pursue federal anti-terrorism charges in conjunction with the FBI.

At the same time, tribes and landowners in South Dakota were busy raising awareness about the pipeline and the threats it posed to groundwater and Indigenous treaty rights. In September 2011, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, along with First Nation Chiefs of Canada, held an “emergency summit” in South Dakota, after which they issued the Mother Earth Accord, also referenced in the new FBI files. The agreement, signed by most tribes in the state, called for a moratorium on tar sands development and an end to the shipping of equipment for the pipeline through the United States and Canada.

The blockade in Wanblee was one of several actions the FBI cited to support its conclusion that the movement could potentially turn to violence. The counterterrorism assessment documents other public meetings, including a protest held by the Oglala Lakota Nation in early February 2012, that the FBI acknowledged was “protected First Amendment activity.” The FBI warned that, after Wanblee, any commercial vehicles associated with the pipeline could now be held “hostage” by Native Americans “who oppose the exploration, extraction, refinement, and/or distribution of petroleum-based products.” The FBI file included the names of those arrested and noted that South Dakota’s U.S. attorney had considered prosecuting the activists under the Hobbs Act, a 1946 law designed to prevent racketeering in interstate commerce, typically through robbery or extortion. Violating the act can carry a punishment of up to 20 years in prison.

Along with monitoring protest activity, the agency was particularly concerned with the activities of Native youth. Certainly, Native youth played an important role in the Keystone XL campaign, and later in organizing opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline. But their actions hardly seemed like the work of a radical militia. In 2015, members of the Lakota Nation’s Cheyenne River Sioux tribe formed the One Mind Youth Movement, a kind of mutual aid society for teens struggling with suicide and depression. Eventually they turned their attention to the Keystone XL campaign and began networking with activists in other parts of the country and around the world. At Standing Rock, members of One Mind formed the International Indigenous Youth Council, which was known for its efforts to defuse tensions between law enforcement and protesters, even drawing criticism from some activists who felt they were too conciliatory.

The FBI saw things differently. According to the newly obtained files, the Minneapolis office appears to have opened another inquiry into what it described as the “Native Youth Movement” to “marshal information about extremist groups in Indian Country targeting a myriad of issues, to include threats to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.” Those records may never be released, however. The FBI denied a Freedom of Information Act request for the material, and asserted that releasing the “investigative file” would reveal intelligence sources and methods or law enforcement techniques and procedures. In October, the Department of Justice rejected an appeal filed by Grist and Type Investigations, stating that “disclosure of the information withheld would harm the interests protected by these exemptions.”

Shortly after Obama and the State Department rejected the Keystone XL pipeline in 2015, Paula Antoine, the director of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Sicangu Oyate Land Office, headed north to the Standing Rock reservation to meet with elders interested in establishing a prayer camp on the banks of the Missouri River. During the fight over Keystone XL, Antoine had helped to set up the first “spirit camp” near the community of Ideal, South Dakota, where she was raised. The idea caught on. Lewis Grassrope, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribal Council, set up a camp on land belonging to his mother a few miles from the Missouri River. A third camp was erected on the Cheyenne Sioux Reservation. Each served as a gathering place for organizers and activists involved in the Keystone XL campaign. Now, activists spearheading the campaign to block the Dakota Access pipeline wanted to do the same thing.

“To me it [KXL] was like the precursor to No DAPL,” Grassrope said, referring to the campaign to block the Dakota Access pipeline. “We knew that the fight was coming, we just didn’t know when.”

Lewis GrassRope speaks at a 2023 political event in Philadelphia. Gilbert Carrasquillo / GC Images

The spirit camp at Standing Rock started out small and was maintained by a group of local activists and their allies. But by the fall of 2016, it had become the focal point of the growing movement to block the pipeline. Thousands of people taking on the mantle of “water protectors” eventually descended on the region. Standing Rock would capture the world’s attention.

But as the newly obtained files show, after years of tracking Keystone XL protesters, the fossil fuel industry and law enforcement had prepared for this moment. Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, hired a private security firm that monitored activist groups and produced dozens of intelligence reports, which were later leaked and reported by The Intercept. This information was shared with law enforcement and the FBI, blurring the lines between public and private partnerships, with the fossil fuel industry at the center. The security firm, TigerSwan, collected intelligence on activists and used an ex-Marine to infiltrate anti-pipeline actions. At the same time, a Department of Homeland Security-funded fusion center in North Dakota developed a “links chart” to map out the leadership of the movement, focusing almost exclusively on Native American activists.

“We all had people following us,” said Antoine. “They knew who we were.”

Read Next How an energy giant helped law enforcement quell the Standing Rock protests Alleen Brown & Naveena Sadasivam

As the encampment grew, the National Guard was eventually enlisted in what became one of the largest police and military deployments in North Dakota’s history, according to historian Nick Estes’s Our History is the Future, his book about the pipeline fight. “Cops in riot gear conducted tipi-by-tipi raids … They dragged half-naked elders from ceremonial sweat lodges, tasered a man in the face, doused people with CS gas and tear gas, and blasted adults and youth with deafening LRAD sound cannons,” Estes writes. Law enforcement also appeared to undermine parts of the movement from the inside. Red Fawn Fallis, a Lakota activist, was sentenced to a nearly five-year prison term for possession of a handgun, following a skirmish with police at Standing Rock. According to reporting by Will Parish in The Intercept, she had been involved in a romantic relationship with an FBI informant. It was later revealed that the weapon belonged to him.

Even after the camps at Standing Rock had been broken down and the last protesters had gone home, the surveillance continued. Grassrope, now 46, returned to the spirit camp he’d established on the Lower Brule reservation and, along with a handful of others, lived in tipis, yurts, and military tents. One day, the FBI called and said they wanted to inspect the camp. “They were pinpointing certain camps created after Standing Rock,” Grassrope said, which they believed were preparing to turn their attention, once again, to the Keystone XL pipeline, which then-President Donald Trump had revived.

Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center said that the fossil fuel industry and law enforcement agencies have continued to strengthen their partnership. In particular, the oil and gas industry’s information-sharing networks have become more sophisticated. In some cases, corporations have made direct payments to state and local law enforcement. For example, Enbridge, a Canadian multinational that recently upgraded its Line 3 pipeline, which cuts through tribal land in Minnesota, reimbursed state and local law enforcement to the tune of more than $8.5 million for their work policing protests against the pipeline.

More broadly, using the playbook that TransCanada developed, the industry has continued to push lawmakers to pursue enhanced felony charges for pipeline protesters. Lawmakers in nearly 20 states have passed legislation criminalizing actions that target “critical infrastructure.”

Read Next After infiltrating Standing Rock, TigerSwan pitched its ‘counterinsurgency’ playbook to other oil companies Alleen Brown & Naveena Sadasivam

“It was definitely part of the state and law enforcement strategy to escalate repression to the point people wouldn’t want to continue taking action,” said Ethan Nuss, a senior campaigner at Rainforest Action Network who was involved in protests targeting the Keystone XL pipeline and Line 3.

Since the Keystone and Dakota Access pipeline fights, the law enforcement response to the environmental movement, and mass protest in general, has remained severe. In January 2023, six Georgia state troopers shot and killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a 26-year-old medic involved in protests around the building of the police training center in Atlanta known to activists as Cop City. An autopsy requested by the family revealed that Tortuguita, as Terán was known, was likely sitting on the ground with both arms raised when they were killed, and an autopsy by DeKalb County found that they had been shot at least 57 times — the first time an environmental activist has been shot and killed by police on U.S. soil. Meanwhile, the state has charged dozens of protesters in Atlanta with domestic terrorism. And according to reporting by Grist and Type Investigations, the FBI has been tracking disparate groups involved in the campaign, some as far away as Chicago.

Despite this crackdown, however, actions targeting fossil fuel infrastructure continue to pop up across the country. In October, police in Virginia arrested three activists and charged them with trespassing and obstruction after they attached themselves to equipment used in building the last leg of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Fast-tracked as part of negotiations over the Inflation Reduction Act, the 303-mile pipeline stands to release up to 40 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere every year once it is completed, according to its environmental impact statement. The developer has since sued two of the protesters, citing congressional approval of the project and arguing that the action caused “substantial delays and expenses” for the company.

“With the global warming crisis at its height, these fights are going to happen more regularly,” said Grassrope. “We have to move faster. That is what it comes down to.”

For the activist community, the Keystone XL campaign still serves as a source of inspiration. When the project was officially terminated in June 2021, Paula Antoine took her granddaughter out to the spirit camp on the Rosebud Sioux reservation. She made an offering and prayed, as she had many times before, for the continued protection of the land.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How the US government began its decade-long campaign against the anti-pipeline movement on Feb 14, 2024.

Categories: H. Green News

Javier Bello could scarcely believe what he was seeing in the waters off the coast of Veracruz, Mexico. Where the Canadian fossil fuel company TC Energy had claimed there was little more than mounds of sand, he saw a thriving ecosystem. Sunbeams sliced through the water, and fish danced between the delicate array of wire and black corals 328 feet below the surface. “It was incredible,” he said.

Peering from a submarine, the marine scientist was among the first to lay eyes on a marine habitat that he and others fear will be devastated by the construction of a natural gas pipeline. The whole point of the voyage, in which scientists, fishers, and activists converged aboard the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise for three weeks last June, was to show what could be lost by the project.

“We don’t often have access to these kinds of research opportunities in Mexico,” Bello said, “so it is a really good example of nongovernmental organizations working with universities to make things happen together.”

TC Energy — the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline — has proposed an extension of a natural gas pipeline that would stretch roughly 497 miles from the coastal towns of Tuxpan to Coatzacoalcos in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The company has claimed that there is nothing of significance on the seafloor along its planned route, and that construction will not harm existing marine protected areas. But Bello says researchers have always had an inkling that the reefs extended beyond the protected areas.

The exact coordinates of the pipeline remain classified, but information leaked to Greenpeace by an anonymous government official pointed to a general area — about 400 feet (120 meters) from shore — which guided the Arctic Sunrise’s route. Previously, researchers had not had the resources needed to study those depths, but the glimpses by the Arctic Sunrise’s research team revealed a rich and vibrant ecosystem that extends beyond the protected areas — one that scientists like Bello would like to have the opportunity to continue to study.

But unease about the project extends beyond protecting and studying corals and fish. Pipeline opponents believe that in addition to environmental destruction, the project will disrupt the livelihoods of local communities and keep Mexico reliant upon fossil fuel, further exacerbating the effects of climate change.

In July of 2022, TC Energy announced a partnership with Mexico’s CFE, the state-owned electric utility, to build an extension to its Sur de Texas-Tuxpan Gas Pipeline. With an estimated cost of $5 billion, TC Energy announced a public offering of common shares to help fund the project the next month.

Following the investment announcements, 18 environmental organizations led by the Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental warned of the pipeline’s grave risk to the surrounding coral reef corridor. They alleged that TC Energy and CFE were trying to avoid scrutiny of the project’s impact by presenting an environmental impact assessment fragmented into two pieces, one for each stage of the pipeline — terrestrial and aquatic.

“In the ocean, our main concern is that the pipeline will be built right on top of the reefs, which is very possible,” said Pablo Ramirez, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Mexico. “But even if they only build near the reefs rather than on top, the sediments could affect the reef, which is very concerning.”

Ramirez notes that Greenpeace acquired leaked documents that laid out TC Energy’s environmental review process. Of particular concern is the assessment methodology it used in determining the suitability of the proposed “dumping polygon,” where sediment dug up to make way for the pipeline will be placed. The leaked information reveals that, per TC Energy’s assessment request, Mexicos’ Safety, Energy and Environment Agency (ASEA) dropped a 50-meter rope to see what was beneath the surface and, because the rope did not reach the seafloor, concluded that the site lacked evidence of an active ecosystem.

In an email to Grist, a TC Energy spokesperson noted that “this project was specifically designed with sustainability in mind. We believe in evidence and science-based decision making. … This marine project route is one of the most studied routes ever undertaken.”

But the proximity of the proposed dumping polygon to the reef alarmed environmentalists, and when Greenpeace sought clarification, Ramirez says, TC Energy responded by providing heavily redacted paperwork, further heightening the organization’s apprehensions.

“That’s when we decided to go into the ocean and check it out for ourselves,” said Ramirez.

What they found were thriving, previously unexplored reefs — a continuation of a highly biodiverse reef system with many endemic species. Bello notes that his primary worry is the absence of transparency between the fossil fuel industry and scientists in cementing the pipeline. “There is a lack of knowledge,” he said. “They aren’t giving access to enough of the information, and during the operation of the pipeline, there could be accidents that would come with great consequences for the corals and ecosystem.”

A Greenpeace submersible studies the reef 100 meters below the surface. Ivan Castaneira / Greenpeace

While there is still time to stop the project, ASEA has already approved stages one and two, which account for construction on land. Through litigation and advocacy campaigns, Greenpeace and other environmental groups aim to delay the project as long as they can, hoping that Mexico’s next president will be more amenable to killing the project.

Ramirez notes that for locals, the pipeline is an infringement on their land and a threat to the livelihood of over 70,000 people whose sole income depends on fish. The threat is particularly acute for the communities of El Bosque and Las Barrancas, which could lose their fish stocks if the pipeline disrupts the marine ecosystems. At the same time, they are losing land to an advancing sea and coastal erosion, driven by reliance on fossil fuels like the natural gas the pipeline will carry. The coastlines of Mexico are heavily impacted by storms and rising sea levels — and reefs, which buffer shorelines, can help to protect coastal communities from increasingly violent storms.

Ramirez also expresses concern that the communities along the pipeline’s route haven’t been fully informed of the risks. “The companies talk to local communities about all of the so-called benefits, but when we went to the communities afterward and presented that the projects are to transport methane, which can be explosive, the locals were very shocked.”

“We didn’t even know about the pipeline production,” Lupe Cobos, a resident of El Bosque, told Grist. “And in a community that is facing major effects of climate change — we are literally losing our homes — that is important information.”

Since Greenpeace representatives have begun speaking with Veracruz locals about the potential risks, Ramirez says, the community has become keen on the organization’s efforts. But in this area, resistance to development can be dangerous. Although Greenpeace has not had reports of anything untoward regarding this pipeline, the risk is still foremost in the minds of locals.

“There is a lot of violence and repression for this kind of resistance,” Ramirez continues, “so we’re still trying to figure out the best way to do it, and how Greenpeace can assume the risk.”

Veracruz is no stranger to the oil industry. Promises of development and benefits from oil have been pledged to locals for more than a century — and yet more than 60 percent of Mexican households live in energy poverty due to accessibility, affordability, or both. According to Ramirez, Greenpeace has heard anonymous reports from residents that TC Energy has already approached fishing communities in the state of Tabasco, offering them money in exchange for their assurance not to oppose the project. (TC Energy did not respond to Grist’s emailed question about the allegation.)

“We have to fight this narrative that they actually want to help the communities,” Ramirez said. “Because at the end of the day, this kind of energy model is leaving the communities behind.” He believes shifting to renewables would be a better strategy to promote energy security and independence for Mexico.

He notes the effects of the 2021 Texas winter freeze, when Mexico lost its gas supply due to frozen pipelines in the U.S. When the states were forced to prioritize national consumption, around 5 million people in Mexico lost power; although most of the affected customers had their power restored within the day, even more people were then affected by temporary planned outages as the National Energy Control Center struggled to maintain a reliable supply.

Additionally, the new infrastructure would go against the international goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as set forth in the Paris agreement. At COP28, the annual U.N. climate conference at the end of last year, countries —including Mexico — participated in the first “global stocktake,” assessing progress toward the Paris Agreement goals. The resulting agreement named fossil fuels as the driver of climate change for the first time, and called on countries to begin “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”

“The fossil fuel model does not fulfill Mexico’s needs,” said Ramirez. “Increasing our gas consumption means that we will remain dependent on U.S. and Canadian gas. We need to change the focus of the model where the betterment of the people is front and center of energy policy.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A company said there was only sand in the path of its new pipeline. Scientists found a thriving ecosystem. on Feb 14, 2024.

Categories: H. Green News

Just Transition Alliance - Wed, 02/14/2024 - 00:01

Our ED José Bravo is a force to be reckoned with–from participating in the drafting team for the Principles of Environmental Justice to helping to organize the shut down of dangerous waste incinerators in Tijuana, Kettleman City, and East LA and so much more.

To celebrate his steadfast service to Indigenous, people of color, and low income communities for over 27 years, would you please consider making a donation to the Just Transition Alliance for his birthday?

Content Happy Birthday, José! appears first in Just Transition Alliance.

Categories: E2. Front Line Community Green