By Ellen Cantarow, Tom Dispatch. “This is what my kids are made of. They are made of water. They are made of the food that is grown in the county that I live in. And they are made of air…. And when you poison these things, you poison us.” – Sandra Steingraber
Continue reading →By Jay Kimball, 8020 Vision. Producing a barrel of oil consumes more and more energy. As we approach an EROI of 1:1 (in other words, consuming 1 barrel of oil to produce 1 barrel of oil) it’s game over.
Continue reading →By Lynn Herrmann, Digital Journal. According to a study by scientists at Cornell University, compared to conventional oil, gas, or coal, the shale gas from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has a greater impact on climate change because of a bigger greenhouse effect due to release of high levels of methane.
Continue reading →Staff, British Columbia Women’s Institute Josh Fox, You Tube. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is looking increasingly like a technology that will have to be left alone, not only because it pollutes the atmosphere and water, but also because the high-pressure injection of waste water from this process is thought to allow ancient faults to slip, leading to earthquakes.
Continue reading →By Staff, Haiti Grassroots Watch. Part 6 of 7. The same week over 300 agricultural plots in Caracol, Haiti, were unexpectedly destroyed, the Haitian government signed an agreement with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, IDB, and Korean textile giant Sae-A Trading to convert the lands into an industrial park. This park will dump its wastes into a bay with extensive coraf reefs and one of the country’s last mangrove forests. (English | French)
By Staff, Haiti Grassroots Watch. Part 5 of 7. Are low-wage, low-skilled assembly industries in Haiti really a “stepping stone” to more complex industrial development? In the Mexican maquiladora boom areas, the water table is dropping by 1 to 1.5 meters every year due to intensive use of water; the blue dye run-off from jeans pollutes rivers and irrigation ditches; 67% of homes have dirt floors, and 52% of streets are unpaved. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, Yale Environment 360 | Eco-Watch. The view that overpopulation is not our problem just doesn’t wash. Using the I = P x A x T equation, one can see that the total impact of the U.S. is gigantic, several hundred times that of Bangladesh. These classic articles date from 1992 and 2008, which makes them all the more relevant and urgent.
Continue reading →By Sandra Steingraber, ORION. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at age forty-four. I have uncles with colon cancer, prostate cancer, stromal cancer. My aunt died of the same kind of bladder cancer—transitional cell carcinoma—that I had. But here’s the punch line to my family story: I am adopted.
Continue reading →By Erika Blumenfeld Al Jazeera In April 2010, BP’s Macondo well explosion leaked oil into the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. Now, over a year later, problems continue. On September 13, 2011, … Continue reading →
By Sandra Steingraber ORION Well-informed futility flourishes whenever there are discontinuities in the messages we receive, as when we are told that a problem is dire (climate chaos) but the proposed solution (buy new light bulbs) seems trivial. If the … Continue reading →
By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Dr. Renaud Piarroux led a team including Haitian epidemiologists that tracked Haiti’s cholera to the Nepalese MINUSTAH base in October 2010 (English | French).
Continue reading →By Gotson Pierre, Francesca Theosmy and Ronald Colbert, AlterPresse | Commentary and translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Since the 1980s, Haiti’s production of its own food has dropped from over 80 Percent to less than 40 percent. The latest blow was the was the introduction of cholera into the Artibonite River during the rice harvest. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Jay Walljasper, On the Commons. The developing world doesn’t simply do less of what’s wrong, it has pioneered new approaches to protect the environment that are rooted in a sense of the commons.
Continue reading →By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The United Nations and 42 non-governmental organizations (NGO) are asking to be paid about $600 for every Haitian to be contaminated with cholera. There is money in cholera.
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