More than half of Chinese rivers have “disappeared” since 1990s

By Emily Ford / The Times

About 28,000 rivers have disappeared from China’s state maps, an absence seized upon by environmentalists as evidence of the irreversible natural cost of developmental excesses.

More than half of the rivers previously thought to exist in China now appear to be missing, according to the 800,000 surveyors who compiled the first national water census, leaving Beijing fumbling to explain the cause.

Only 22,909 rivers, covering an area of 100 square kilometres were located by surveyors, compared with the more than 50,000 present in the 1990s, a three-year study by the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics found.

Officials blame the apparent loss on climate change, arguing that it has caused waterways to vanish, and on mistakes by earlier cartographers. But environmental experts say that the disappearance of the rivers is a real and a direct manifestation of headlong, ill-conceived development, where projects are often imposed or approved without public consultation.

The United Nations considers China one of the 13 countries most affected by water scarcity, as industrial toxins have poisoned historic water sources and were blamed last year for causing the Yangtze to turn an alarming shade of red. This month the carcasses of about 16,000 dead pigs dumped in the river have been pulled from its waters, and 1,000 dead ducks were found dumped this week in the Nanhe River in the southwestern Sichuan province.

Ma Jun, a water expert at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said that the missing rivers were a cause for “great attention” and underscored the urgent need for a more sustainable mode of development.

“There might be some disparity [in the number of rivers] due to different research methods. However, the disappearance of rivers is the reality. It is really happening in China because of the over-exploitation of river resources,” Mr Ma said. “One of the major reasons is the over-exploitation of the underground water reserves, while environmental destruction is another reason, because desertification of forests has caused a rain shortage in the mountain areas.”

Large hydroelectric projects such as the Three Gorges Dam, which diverted trillions of gallons of water to drier regions, were likely to have played a role, Mr Ma said.

The census charted a decline in water quality, citing the “severe over-exploitation” of underground water reserves by 60 of its biggest cities.

The report came as Li Keqiang, the new premier, gave a speech in which he pledged greater transparency on pollution, which Beijing fears is a potential catalyst for social unrest.

“We must take the steps in advance, rather than hurry to handle these issues when they have caused a disturbance in society,” Mr Li was quoted by state media as saying.

The missing rivers provoked wistful recollections among Chinese internet users, most of whom will have witnessed dizzying urbanisation.

“The rivers I used to play around have disappeared, the only ones left are polluted, we can’t eat the fish in them, they are all bitter,” a person using the name Pippi Shuanger wrote on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

Despite water shortages, the threat of floods is a problem for much of the Chinese mainland, with two thirds of the population living in flood-prone areas. Flash floods caused by heavy rain claimed the lives of 77 people in Beijing last July.

From The Times: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article3725724.ece

Train derails in Minnesota, spills up to 30,000 gallons of oil

By Agence France-Presse

Crews were working Thursday to clean up as much as 30,000 gallons of oil that spilled onto a Minnesota field after a mile-long train derailed.

It was not yet clear whether the Canadian Pacific train was transporting regular crude or oil from the Alberta tar sands, but the spill will certainly add fuel to the fight against the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

Luckily, frigid temperatures helped contain the environmental damage after 14 train cars fell off the tracks and three began leaking oil on Wednesday morning.

“Minnesota is having a late spring and the site is still frozen and covered with quite a lot of snow, which helped prevent any oil from moving down the ditch or soaking into the soil,” said Dan Olson, a spokesman for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.”

“The accident currently poses no threat to either surface or ground waters.”

The bulk of the oil spilled from a single tank, which lost a “substantial amount” of its 26,000 gallon capacity, Olson told AFP. Two other tanks were leaking more slowly and the spill was estimated at 20,000 to 30,000 gallons.

No injuries were reported as a result of the derailment in a rural area about a mile north of Parkers Prairie in west central Minnesota, the Otter Tail county sheriff’s office said.

Environmental activists are preparing to flood an April 18 public hearing in Nebraska to discuss the controversial $5.3 billion Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline.

The US State Department released a draft environmental impact statement on March 1 suggesting the rerouted pipeline, which would transport some 830,000 barrels a day, would have no major impact on the environment.

Critics contend that the heavy tar sand oil would be nearly impossible to clean up if it were to spill in one of the more than 1,000 waterways that will be traversed by the pipeline, because it sinks instead of floats.

The exploitation of the tar sands also results in significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than traditional oil extraction because it must be dug out of the ground and then basically melted with the heat of natural gas.

From The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/28/train-derailment-spills-30000-gallons-of-oil-in-minnesota/

Anger grows against Obama after signing of Monsanto Protection Act

By Connor Adams Sheets / International Business Times

Anger is growing against President Barack Obama the day after he signed into law a spending bill that included a provision opponents have dubbed the “Monsanto Protection Act.”

That bill, the HR 933 continuing resolution, was mainly aimed at averting a government shutdown and ensuring that the federal government would continue to be able to pay its bills for the next six months.

But food and public safety advocates and independent farmers are furious that Obama signed it despite its inclusion of language that they consider to be a gift to Monsanto Company (NYSE:MON) and other firms that produce genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or genetically engineered (GE) seeds and crops.

And protesters have spent the past couple of days demonstrating in front of the White House, first calling on Obama to veto the bill, and now criticizing him for his failure to do so.

The protests come on the heels of a massive petition campaign organized by the advocacy group Food Democracy Now, which gathered the signatures of more than 200,000 people who wanted Obama to veto HR 933 in order to stop Section 735 — the so-called “Monsanto Protection Act” — from being codified into law.

But Obama ignored it, instead choosing to sign a bill that effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of GMO or GE crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from the consumption of these products may come to light in the future.

“This provision is simply an industry ploy to continue to sell genetically engineered seeds even when a court of law has found they were approved by USDA illegally,” the petition stated. “It is unnecessary and an unprecedented attack on U.S. judicial review. Congress should not be meddling with the judicial review process based solely on the special interest of a handful of companies.”

Many food safety advocates maintain that there have not been enough studies into the potential health risks of GMO and GE seeds and crops, and the judicial power to stop companies from selling or planting them was one key recourse they were relying on to stop them from being sold if health risks come to light.

But the “Monsanto Protection Act” — referred to as the “Farmer Assurance Provision” by its supporters — removes that course of action, and those who are angry at Obama for signing the bill are also incensed with Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D- Md., who is accused of failing to give the amendment that inserted the language a proper hearing.

“In this hidden backroom deal, Sen. Mikulski turned her back on consumer, environmental and farmer protection in favor of corporate welfare for biotech companies such as Monsanto,” Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, said in a statement. “This abuse of power is not the kind of leadership the public has come to expect from Sen. Mikulski or the Democrat Majority in the Senate.”

A number of the provision’s vocal opponents allege that it was quietly inserted while the bill was still in the Senate Appropriations Committee, which Mikulski chairs, and that her committee did not hold any hearings on its language. They say many Democratic members who voted for the bill were unaware.

From International Business Times: http://www.ibtimes.com/furor-growing-against-obama-over-monsanto-protection-act-1156459

Black Autonomy Federation Spotlights Police Terrorism in Memphis

Black Autonomy Federation Spotlights Police Terrorism in Memphis

By J. G. / Deep Green Resistance Great Plains

On March 15th the International Day Against Police Brutality was observed for the first time in Memphis, Tennessee by the Black Autonomy Federation. People came to the event from as far away as Iowa, Ohio, and Denver. People gathered first outside city hall and spoke. Cardboard coffins were lined up facing out from city hall representing 13 of the 14 people killed by the Memphis Police Department in the last thirteen months.

Women have also been sexually assaulted by the Memphis police officers. JoNina Ervin, acting chair of the Black Autonomy Federation stated that they have been told by a number of women that there are police in Memphis that arrest women and force them to have sex with them, “That’s the kind of police we have here. This is a corrupt police department and a police department out of control.”

Lorenzo Ervin of the BAF stated that “We have out right atrocities that no one of these people can defend but the authorities here, the city authorities as well as the state prosecutors are engaged in a conspiracy to cover up and not to prosecute these crimes by the police, the authorities and others working in concert with them. This is why it is important for us to bring attention to the city of Memphis, Tennessee.”

People later chanted and marched to the Memphis police department and the Shelby County Jail. Activists and family members of those murdered spoke out. In attendance was the family of Delois Epps and Makayla Ross who were killed on August 26th leaving from a family get-together by a police officer Alex Beard. Thirty- three year old family member Shaquitta Epps asks “Why wasn’t he charged?” When asked if she was surprised by the response of the city and police department towards her family members death she responded “No it happens all the time but I never thought it would happen to my family. You see it in the paper and on the TV but you never really know until it happens to your family.”

Martin Ezsutton brother of twenty-two year old Rekia Boyd who was killed in Chicago by police officer Dante Servin stated that “The police were highly disrespectful.” Servin is not being charged with the murder and is being paid working a desk job that pays 90,000 dollars. “He just got a promotion for murdering my sister!…Who is going to take responsibility? They failed to prosecute him for his actions.”

Unfortunately the deaths of black people by the police in Memphis and across the country are not a rare occurrence with a rate of one black person every 36 hours being killed by the police in the United States (“Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 120 black people” Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, July 2012)

The next day a conference was held to discuss how to organize against police brutality and killings with activists from various communities. The BAF discussed the ongoing police killings and brutality in the context of the capitalist state. Lorenzo states that “ We understand we are not just fighting the police we are fighting fascism.” The BAF is calling for an international boycott against the town of Memphis until it “stops persecuting and killing poor working class black people and consorting with the KKK.”

On March 30th the Black Autonomy Federation are organizing a counter protest against the KKK. The Klan are prompted to come because of a name change of Nathan Bedford Forest Park to Health Science Park. Forest was the first grand wizard of the Klan. According to JoNina Ervin the city has been uncooperative with their efforts to organize an anti Klan rally. “There is a media campaign telling people to stay home, don’t come out, ignore the Klan, and the line they are using is that any person that comes out is crazy. They want to criminalize the people who are protesting the Klan when the Klan are the real criminals.”

According to members of the BAF the NAACP has been collaborating with the state in this. “The head of the NAACP in Memphis said on TV, people should stay home and wash their cars and shook hands with the Sons of the Confederacy. The constitution gives people first amendment rights they will have police to protect them but people opposed to the terrorism of the KKK are just supposed to shut up that day. They want us to be off in a corner some place. The city has been in collaboration with these neo confederates for so long.” For JoNina and others in the BAF, it is crucial for people in Memphis and from all over the country to come and take a stand against the Klan, “If you don’t let the Klan know that you’re here and opposed to their white supremacy, that gives them free range to keep on coming back here and that is why they keep coming back.”

If you would like to get in contact with the Black Autonomy Federation or offer support, please contact them at Organize.the.hood@gmail.com.

Root Force: Why Wind Power is a Sham

By Root Force

 

A series of recently released studies make it clear that wind power is not going to save us—not from global warming, not from high extinction rates, and not from the system of high-energy-consumption industrial exploitation that is killing the planet.

Let’s start with the most damning findings: even the most large-scale shift to wind power cannot slow greenhouse gas emissions enough to have any positive effect on the climate, although it may manage to make things worse. Why?

A study published in Nature Climate Change in September found that although hypothetically there is enough power in the earth’s winds to sustain current levels of energy consumption, in practice you could never harvest enough energy from wind to affect the climate:

Turbines create drag, or resistance, which removes momentum from the winds and tends to slow them. As the number of wind turbines increases, the amount of energy that is generated increases. But at some point, the winds would be slowed so much that adding more turbines will not generate more electricity. …

[T]he study found that the climate effects of extracting wind energy at the level of current global demand would be small, as long as the turbines were spread out and not clustered in just a few regions. At the level of global energy demand, wind turbines might affect surface temperatures by about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit and affect precipitation by about 1 percent. Overall, the environmental impacts would not be substantial. (emphasis added)

Another study, published in Nature last month, found that wind farms being constructed in Scotland actually lead to a net increase in carbon dioxide emissions:

Wind farms are typically built on upland sites, where peat soil is common. In Scotland alone, two thirds of all planned onshore wind development is on peatland. England and Wales also have large numbers of current or proposed peatland wind farms.

But peat is also a massive store of carbon, described as Europe’s equivalent of the tropical rainforest. Peat bogs contain and absorb carbon in the same way as trees and plants — but in much higher quantities.

British peatland stores at least 3.2 billion tons of carbon, making it by far the country’s most important carbon sink and among the most important in the world.

Wind farms, and the miles of new roads and tracks needed to service them, damage or destroy the peat and cause significant loss of carbon to the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change. …

Richard Lindsay of the University of East London, said … “The world’s peatlands have four times the amount of carbon than all the world’s rainforests. But they are a Cinderella habitat, completely invisible to decision- makers.”

Finally, a study published last month in the journal Environmental Research Letters conducted a further analysis on the effects of wind turbine drag:

Each wind turbine creates behind it a “wind shadow” in which the air has been slowed down by drag on the turbine’s blades. The ideal wind farm strikes a balance, packing as many turbines onto the land as possible, while also spacing them enough to reduce the impact of these wind shadows. But as wind farms grow larger, they start to interact, and the regional-scale wind patterns matter more.

Keith’s research has shown that the generating capacity of very large wind power installations (larger than 100 square kilometers) may peak at between 0.5 and 1 watts per square meter. Previous estimates, which ignored the turbines’ slowing effect on the wind, had put that figure at between 2 and 7 watts per square meter.

In short, we may not have access to as much wind power as scientists thought.

“If wind power’s going to make a contribution to global energy requirements that’s serious, 10 or 20 percent or more, then it really has to contribute on the scale of terawatts in the next half-century or less,” says Keith.

If we were to cover the entire Earth with wind farms, he notes, “the system could potentially generate enormous amounts of power, well in excess of 100 terawatts, but at that point my guess, based on our climate modeling, is that the effect of that on global winds, and therefore on climate, would be severe — perhaps bigger than the impact of doubling CO2.” (emphasis added)

As if that weren’t enough, another study has just concluded that large wind turbines constructed offshore may snap like matches when hit by medium-size waves:

“If we do not take ringing into consideration, offshore wind turbine parks can lead to financial ruin,” warns John Grue to the research magazine Apollon at University of Oslo. …

Ringing does not just harm wind turbines. Ringing has already been a great problem for the oil industry. The designers of the YME platform did not take ringing into account, and lost NOK 12 billion.

“It is possible to build your way out of the ringing problem by strengthening the oil rigs. However, it is not financially profitable to do the same with wind turbines,” says John Grue.

And finally, let’s not forget what environmentalists have been warning about for decades: wind turbines murder birds.

ReWire has learned that the North Sky River Wind project, which attracted fierce opposition from environmental groups concerned about potential threat to eagles and California condors, was the site of a golden eagle death in January. …

The eagle kill apparently occurred on January 29, just a month after North Sky River started generating power.

So what’s the solution? Certainly not wind, solar, or any other industrial magic bullet. The solution is to dramatically scale back consumption and shift to local-based economies not dependent upon stealing resources from distant people and lands.

The solution is to demolish the global economic system.

Get started!