Month: October 2014 (Page 2 of 2)

This article states that the Pentagon sees climate change as an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages.  The Pentagon is implementing new strategies to help with rising sea levels, extreme weather, draughts and food shortages.  They are saying that the lack of water in the Middle East can be related to the increased extremists groups.  These extremist groups have seized water supplies to gain control and power.  The Pentagon’s increased emphasis on the national security threats of climate change is aimed in part at building support for a United Nations agreement, to be signed next year in Paris, that would require the world’s largest producers of planet-warming carbon pollution to slash their emissions, while increasing aid to help the world’s most vulnerable populations adapt to the effects of global warming. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/us/pentagon-says-global-warming-presents-immediate-security-threat.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Killing the Lorax: 900 Environmental Activists Slain in the Past 10 Years | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

This article talks about a study that revealed more than 900 environmental activists were killed as a direct result of their work defending environmental and land rights between 2002 and 2013.  Latin America and Asia-Pacific have been particularly hit hard and these numbers might even be low because of the shortage of information available.  It is amazing that I have not heard more about this, but governments and big business have the money and resources to cover things up.  I find this relevant to our class discussion about terrorism.  The harm against humans is not done by the environmentalist but it is done to them.  Money and power can do horrible things and then place the blame on others who do not deserve it.

Nuclear fuel comes in the form of enriched uranium, which naturally produces heat as uranium atoms split. The heat is used to boil water and produce steam, which drives a steam turbine that spins a generator to create electricity.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/japan-nuclear-crisis1.htm

In March of 2011, Japan suffered the largest earthquake in modern history, which triggered a 9.0 tsunami and destroyed the backup diesel generators that powered the water coolant pumps of the country’s Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear facility. These pumps circulate water through the reactor to remove decay heat. Uncirculated, the water temperature and pressure continued to rise and the reactor radiation began to split the water into oxygen and volatile hydrogen. This resulted in hydrogen explosions, which breached the reactor building’s steel containment panels. If water continued to boil off, a meltdown would have almost certainly occurred. Therefore, the operators decided to flood the reactors with seawater because seawater ruins the reactors. Although the situation could have been much worse, there was an increase in release of radiation, which has led to a massive amount of radioactive water.  After nuclear crisis of 2011, all 48 of Japan’s commercial nuclear reactors were shut down.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-power5.htm

Now, 3 years later, Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency declared that an atomic power plant is safe to operated. The two reactors at the Sendai power plant on the southern island of Kyushu are the first to be certified as safe enough to restart. Final decision on whether to restart the plant will be decided in December by the prime minister. Public opinion polls show that the public remains skeptical about the safety of the plants and the governing liberal democratic party to ensure that safety. It makes sense that after a nuclear crisis such as the one in 2011, the public may be skeptical of restoring the plants to operation and although the agency is stating that safety regulations will be higher than ever, it doesn’t appear that they are taking public concern completely into consideration- especially considering the Sendai plant is in a volcanic area.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/world/asia/japanese-nuclear-plant-declared-safe-to-operate-for-first-time-since-fukushima-daiichi-disaster.html?_r=0

If, like me, you don’t know much about nuclear energy, here is a website that briefly outlines it!

http://www.nnr.co.za/what-is-nuclear-energy/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/burning-rage/

This report offers a much different light in which we see the group Earth Liberation Front. This is the view main stream media offers, “the burning rage of a dying planet.” It does not even discuss the definition of terrorism and whether or not these people should be named as terrorists, it just comes out and labels them as so. 

The video also talks a lot about Animal Liberation Front, which is a sister group to the ELF. The ALF has been known to videotape themselves breaking into research labs, where they destroy years of painstaking work and free captive animals.  Even as they do these things, the ALF describes themselves as non-violent.

My question is what is violence to you? I always grew up thinking that violence was hurting anything, including property. The ALF and ELF however claim that arson is not a form of violence, as long as no living thing is getting hurt.

The climate march that took place two weeks ago was a public display of how large and concentrated the climate change movement has become. Protests like this are strong indicators to the rest of the world what the common perception of climate change has become. Nevertheless, for all the good the climate change march has done to spread awareness, it has also reignited the people and organizations that believe climate change is either fake, or over-exaggeration. In this article by Dave Wakefield, CEO for a metal fabrication company, he does not necessarily deny that climate change does not exist, but instead states that climate change intervention is an attack on American capitalism. For the mid-west audience he is writing for this may strike harder, but blaming climate change for hurting capitalism is idiotic because capitalism/ rapid economic growth is essentially what caused climate change. Wakefield’s belief that the climate change march was an assault on capitalism scares me.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/02/ban-uranium-mining-grand-canyon-arizona-court

Here’s a short article that I thought might boost some hope (and critical thought)!

In 2012, the US interior secretary Ken Salazar created a 20 year ban on new mining claims and mine development (without permits) across 1 million acres of public lands around the Grand Canyon. When it was recently questioned by a mining industry lawsuit as “unconstitutional”, the US district court for Arizona upheld the ban by saying that Salazar had the authority to protect a national treasure.

Uranium mining in the area would threaten aquifers and streams and release toxic waste. For example, one picture in the article is captioned with the fact that although one uranium mine stopped functioning in 1969, it still is contaminated with radioactivity. On the other hand, the ban itself is projected to stop 26 new uranium mines and 700 exploration projects from being developed.

Although this article is fairly succinct, it elicits a lot of different ideas about policy and values. For example, some might see this as extremely cautionary since it stops development and the enhancement it would bring to the economy. Others yet might say that uranium mining is better than fracking or crude oil imports from Canada; after all, another post on the blog stated that some environmental groups are now embracing nuclear energy. In terms of preservation, the fact that this ban was upheld seems almost dreamlike. Is the only way to continue preservation to promote national symbolism of the environment? If this was anywhere else besides the Grand Canyon, would the ban have been upheld?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/us/keystone-xl-pipeline-nebraska-opponents.html

We talked about the pipeline in class today so I thought I’d do a little research on it!

The Keystone Pipeline was proposed six years ago by the energy company TransCanada. It is supposed to transport crude oil 1,179 miles from Alberta, Canada to southern Nebraska. The pipeline, although partially built has been received with mixed feelings and a ton of protest. Unlike other environmental issues, it is not just the environmental extremists who are against the pipeline. Native Americans, farmers, city dwellers, elderly and even some conservatives are opposed to the continuation of the pipeline.

Arguments against the pipeline include concerns that any type of spill would irreparably harm the Ogallala Aquifer, the source of water used to irrigate cropland and supply taps across a wide portion of the heartland. In response, one might say that they are taking extra care to prevent spillage. Regardless of the ignorance of that statement because spills are always possible, the pipeline should not be built solely on the fact that is supports the extraction of tar sands and increases our dependence on fossil fuel. The oil extracted from tar sands is not clean oil. It is dirty, grainy oil and it requires a lot more energy and water to make it usable than we get from it’s use. The process of extraction is not good for the environment and it creates very ugly eye sores in the surrounding area.

The article linked talks about a protest that happened saturday in Neligh, Nebraska. A patch of farmland became a concert with Willie Nelson and Neil Young to protest the Keystone Pipeline. 8,000 people attended the protest and many spoke emotionally and at length about their opposition to the pipeline and the problems they fear it portends.