Summary: Stories of interest from recent weeks, focusing on the environment and those who harm it

Japan

• Yup … They’re Going to Dump It

  Tepco is planning on dumping all of the radioactive water stored at Fukushima into the ocean. The industry-controlled nuclear regulators are pushing for dumping the radiation, as well.





• Surge in cancers among young in Fukushima, but experts divided on cause





• Thyroid Cancers Surge Among Fukushima Youths





• Homeless recruited to decontaminate Fukishima; paid less than minimum wage

United States

• Billion-dollar climate denial network exposed

• Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change

  Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.





• Not Just the Koch Brothers: New Drexel Study Reveals Funders Behind the Climate Change Denial Effort

  Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are “dark money,” or concealed funding.





• Wikileaks Disclosure Reveals Energy Company Strategy Against Anti-Keystone Pipeline Activists





• WikiLeaks reveals energy giants’ strategies to suppress anti-Keystone activists

  The presentation created by global intelligence firm Stratfor divides environmental groups into four categories: radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists. The document then offers strategic ways of dealing with each type.





• Wikileaks: Anti-Fracking Movement in NYS Started with ProPublica





• Winter storm closes part of US government





• US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet

  The extensive global operations of the US military (wars, interventions, and secret operations on over one thousand bases around the world and six thousand facilities in the United States) are not counted against US greenhouse gas limits. Sara Flounders writes, “By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.”





• US Fails in Using Renewable Energy to its Full Potential

  The Pacific Ocean is warming at a rate faster than anything seen in the last 10,000 years and we may have the warmest Arctic in the last 120,000 years. Our burning of fossil fuels is the big thing pushing us toward the brink. Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, claims that we have enough wind and solar to power the world. The question is why aren’t we using it? This isn’t a matter of changing how we get energy, it means shifting the power dynamic in this country—and across the world for that matter—and literally putting power in the hands of individual people and communities. Not only will renewable resources cut down global warming but also, as fossil fuel costs rise, the cost for wind and solar power is actually decreasing.

United Kingdom

• UK's worst winter storms for two decades set to continue

  Met Office issues yellow weather warnings of ice and rain, with 96 flood warnings in place and a further 244 areas on flood alert





• Half of Britain to be offered for shale gas drilling as fracking areas face 50 trucks passing each day

  Ministers "stepping up the search for shale" with new exploration rights to be offered to fracking firms next summer

Canada

• Right Now, It's as Cold in Canada as Where Our Rover Is On Mars

  Canada is having a cold snap at the moment. This week, in Southern Manitoba, the temperature reached a blisteringly frigid -31 degrees Celsius, or nearly -24 Fahrenheit. (Wind chill values in Winnipeg—in case you were curious and/or in need of some meteorological schadenfreude—dipped to -58 Fahrenheit.) Which is crazy, and which makes for, as Yahoo's Geekquinox blog puts it, "the coldest afternoon temperatures the area has seen in several years."





• Canadian libraricide: Tories torch and dump centuries of priceless, irreplaceable environmental archives

  Back in 2012, when Canada's Harper government announced that it would close down national archive sites around the country, they promised that anything that was discarded or sold would be digitized first. But only an insignificant fraction of the archives got scanned, and much of it was ">simply sent to landfill or burned.
  
  Unsurprisingly, given the Canadian Conservatives' war on the environment, the worst-faring archives were those that related to climate research. The legendary environmental research resources of the St. Andrews Biological Station in St. Andrews, New Brunswick are gone. The Freshwater Institute library in Winnipeg and the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland: gone. Both collections were world-class.
  
  An irreplaceable, 50-volume collection of logs from HMS Challenger's 19th century expedition went to the landfill, taking with them the crucial observations of marine life, fish stocks and fisheries of the age.





• Naomi Klein: climate movement needs radicals like Mandela

Africa

• Ugandans fear curse of oil wealth as it threatens to blight 'pearl of Africa'

  Oil drilling may bring benefits in healthcare and education, but critics are concerned about corruption and the effect on wildlife





• Toxic 'e-waste' dumped in poor nations, says United Nations

  Millions of tonnes of old electronic goods illegally exported to developing countries, as people dump luxury items

Chevron

• Indigenous Groups Win Right to Seize Chevron’s Canadian Assets over $18 Billion in Amazon Pollution

  A court in Canada has ruled Ecuadorean farmers and fishermen can try to seize the assets of oil giant Chevron based on a 2011 decision in an Ecuadorean court found it liable for nearly three decades of soil and water pollution near oil wells, and said it had ruined the health and livelihoods of people living in nearby areas of the Amazon rainforest.





• Chevron suspends shale gas exploration in Romania

  U.S. oil company Chevron has suspended exploration for shale gas in northeastern Romania after hundreds of anti-fracking protesters tore down fences.
  
  Chevron won approval to drill exploratory wells in the town of Pungesti, but halted work for a second time Saturday after residents blocked access to the site.

Deep Sea and Sea Traffic

• An ecosystem-based approach to protect the deep sea from mining

  Five hundred miles southeast of Hawai'i, in international waters far out of sight of any land, there are vast mineral resources 5,000 meters below the sea.





• Shrimp Fishing Banned In Gulf Of Maine For 2014 Due To Overfishing, Warming Oceans

  Shrimp populations in northern New England have declined so quickly that a regulatory agency has banned all shrimp fishing for the 2014 season in order to allow the small crustaceans to replenish themselves. The sharp fall-off in shrimp stock is due to overfishing and worsening environmental conditions, experts say.





• Shell's record-breaking Prelude takes to the water

  A floating vessel that is longer than the Empire State Building is high has taken to the water for the first time.

Australia

• Greg Hunt approves dredging off Queensland to create huge coalport

  'Strictest conditions in Australian history' to safeguard Great Barrier Reef while building three terminals at Abbot Point

• Japanese killing fleet sets sail for the Australian Antarctic Whale Sanctuary

  The Japanese Whale Poaching Fleet has left Japan, setting sail for the Australian Antarctic Whale Sanctuary. The factory vessel, the Nisshin Maru left Innoshima Port today and the refuelling vessel, the Sun Laurel, left just days prior. The harpoon ships no longer have their AIS (Automatic Identification System) on and it appears that they are underway as well.

Middle East/Persian Gulf

• Israel Violates International Law by Selling Oil Drilling Rights in Occupied Syria

  Israel has granted oil exploration rights inside Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights, to Genie Energy. Major shareholders of Genie Energy – which also has interests in shale gas in the United States and shale oil in Israel – include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild.





• Google Earth reveals Persian gulf fish catch is six times larger than thought

  Google Earth has been once again used by researchers for scientific discovery.
  
  Researchers from the University of British Columbia scoured Google Earth in search of fishing weirs along the coasts of seven Persian Gulf nations. They found some 1,900 fish traps, suggesting that the total fish catch in the Persian Gulf may be up to six times the officially reported level of 5,260 metric tons per year.

Other

• Dust to Dust: a man-made Malthusian crisis

  We must wake up to the global land crisis or face a very real threat of famine





• Water shortages may make fracking impractical, industry says

  Quantities required for the fracking process may make it problematic in areas of the UK where resources are scarce