Ellen Faulkner, 74, of Redwood Valley, pled no contest to five charges of infraction trespass for arrests she incurred in March, April, May and September this year while protesting the Caltrans bypass around Willits. Faulkner received 35 hours of community service, with no probation, fines, fees or stay away order. District attorney David Eyster had offered one year probation, a 20 yd. stay away plus $350 incosts.
Unlike activist/journalist Will Parish, who scaled and occupied a wick drain tower in June, shutting down operations on the work site for eleven days, Faulkner did not request that her infractions be raised to misdemeanors in order to exercise herright to a jury trial. Instead, she made a statement to the court explaining why she took the actions she did, including locking down to equipment, resupplying the tree sitters and supporting other activists by going to jail with them.
Faulkner, a nonviolence trainer, said she wanted to model nonviolent civil disobedience by breaking the smallest possible law to make her point. “I put my body in the way to stop an infinitely greater crime from happening: the destruction of the wetlands. None of the regulatory agencies are holding Caltrans accountable for their numerous egregious violations… they have guns and force, we have only our bodies”, Faulkner said. Judge Ann Moormann praised Faulkner’s “speaking from the heart” and recognized Faulkner’s belief thatwhat she did was right.
Citing an Aug. 28 article in The Willits News headlined “ACE: Caltrans in “Serious Breach” of Permit”, Faulkner said “then they do nothing”. Caltrans has also received notices of violations from the State Water Quality Board. In September, they were stopped from hauling untested and possibly contaminated fill material from an old mill site when the County pulled its’ erroneously granted permit under threat of a law suit.
In a Sept. 13 letter Caltrans admitted to the Sherwood Valley Rancheria Pomo tribe that an extensive archeological site in the bypass route had been “disturbed” by being bulldozed, wick-drained and covered with three feet of soil. Tribal Chair, Mike Fitzgerald described the known site as “eviscerated” and said thetribe had requested protection of the sites but had received none.
Acidification of the Arctic Ocean is occurring faster than projected according to new findings published in the journal PLoS One. The increase in rate is being blamed on rapidly melting sea ice, a process that may have important consequences for health of the Arctic ecosystem.
Ocean acidification is the process by which pH levels of seawater decrease due to greater amounts of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the oceans from the atmosphere. Currently oceans absorb about one-fourth of the greenhouse gas. Lower pH levels make water more acidic and lab studies have shown that more acidic water decrease calcification rates in many calcifying organisms, reducing their ability to build shells or skeletons. These changes, in species ranging from corals to shrimp, have the potential to impact species up and down the food web.
The team of federal and university researchers found that the decline of sea ice in the Arctic summer has important consequences for the surface layer of the Arctic Ocean. As sea ice cover recedes to record lows, as it did late in the summer of 2012, the seawater beneath is exposed to carbon dioxide, which is the main driver of ocean acidification.
In addition, the freshwater melted from sea ice dilutes the seawater, lowering pH levels and reducing the concentrations of calcium and carbonate, which are the constituents, or building blocks, of the mineral aragonite. Aragonite and other carbonate minerals make up the hard part of many marine micro-organisms’ skeletons and shells. The lowering of calcium and carbonate concentrations may impact the growth of organisms that many species rely on for food.
The new research shows that acidification in surface waters of the Arctic Ocean is rapidly expanding into areas that were previously isolated from contact with the atmosphere due to the former widespread ice cover.
“A remarkable 20 percent of the Canadian Basin has become more corrosive to carbonate minerals in an unprecedented short period of time. Nowhere on Earth have we documented such large scale, rapid ocean acidification” according to lead researcher and ocean acidification project chief, U.S. Geological Survey oceanographer Lisa Robbins.
Globally, Earth’s ocean surface is becoming acidified due to absorption of man-made carbon dioxide. Ocean acidification models show that with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, the Arctic Ocean will have crucially low concentrations of dissolved carbonate minerals, such as aragonite, in the next decade.
In the Arctic, where multi-year sea ice has been receding, we see that the dilution of seawater with melted sea ice adds fuel to the fire of ocean acidification” according to co-author, and co-project chief, Jonathan Wynn, a geologist from the University of the South Florida. “Not only is the ice cover removed leaving the surface water exposed to man-made carbon dioxide, the surface layer of frigid waters is now fresher, and this means less calcium and carbonate ions are available for organisms.
Researchers were able to investigate seawater chemistry at high spatial resolution during three years of research cruises in the Arctic, alongside joint U.S.-Canada research efforts aimed at mapping the seafloor as part of the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf program. In addition to the NOAA supported ECS ship time, the ocean acidification researchers were funded by the USGS, National Science Foundation, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Compared to other oceans, the Arctic Ocean has been rather lightly sampled. “It’s a beautiful but challenging place to work,” said Robert Byrne, a USF marine chemist. Using new automated instruments, the scientists were able to make 34,000 water-chemistry measurements from the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker. “This unusually large data set, in combination with earlier studies, not only documents remarkable changes in Arctic seawater chemistry but also provides a much-needed baseline against which future measurements can be compared.” Byrne credits scientists and engineers at the USF College of Marine Science with developing much of the new technology.
Environmental activist group Generation Alpha has released a video of their confrontation with Aurizon CEO Lance Hockridge. The group’s Over Our Dead Bodies campaign has started targeting Aurizon over their crucial financial and infrastructure role in mining the Galilee Basin in Australia.
The coal mining complex planned for the Galilee Basin is the biggest in the world, and will challenge the Tar Sands as the most damaging resource project on the planet. Mining the Galilee would produce 330 million tonnes of coal, enough to fill a train wrapped around the world one and half times.
The activists visited the CEO at his $4.5 million mansion to place giant carbon footprints coming from his front gate, to demonstrate his personal responsibility for what is seen by the environment movement as an impending environmental catastrophe. He saw the action and approached the activists, accusing them of trespass, even though they were clearly outside his property.
In the confrontation between Lance Hockridge and campaign coordinator Ben Pennings, Hockridge firstly denies the importance of Aurizon. However, when Pennings asks how the mining companies will transport the coal without a rail line the CEO simply says, “That’s a matter for them isn’t it”. Afterwards, Pennings said:
Mining the Galilee Basin is like setting off a bomb. 700 million tons of extra carbon pollution each year is a deadly catastrophe, an environmental crime. CEOs shouldn’t be able to hide behind a corporate entity for their life threatening decisions. We will continue to target Lance Hockridge, to tell the truth about this crime to his neighbours, his community, the world. We will do this and much more till he considers what’s best for the future, not just his wallet.
Activists protesting the filling of some of California’s last remaining wetlands used steel tubes to lock themselves to a fill truck around 10:15 last night in the wick drain field one mile north of Willits on highway 101. A crowd of supporters gathered holding a banner that read: “Save Our Water, Stop Caltrans Now!”
Willits residents Earthworm, 18, and Feather were locked down for 8 and ½ hours to the immobilized truck, and another organizer, Ellen Faulkner, 74, was arrested by CHP. The action began a little after 10 pm on September 10.
All work came to a halt as some 20 trucks piled up behind Gate 6, the exit to the construction site where Caltrans is covering up thousands of wick drains with tons of fill, some of which may be contaminated with toxic materials. The massive project has drawn fierce criticism and persistent protests from a well-organized opposition who maintain the freeway is overbuilt, unnecessarily expensive and environmentally damaging.
Bypass opponents demand a two-lane, scaled down version of the bypass that would meet traffic needs while protecting precious wetlands and cost a fraction of the $300 million dollar, four-lane freeway proposed by Caltrans. Caltrans used false and misleading claims to exclude all consideration of 2-lane options. In addition, Caltrans failed to consider the effects of 55,000 thousand wick drains on the hydrology of the wetlands, according to Army Corp of Engineer’s letter of Aug. 16.
“We can still dramatically change the northern terminus of this project and protect a significant amount of wetlands. That’s why it’s so important that people take a stand and for the agencies to support us and demand that Caltrans shrink the project on the north end in the wetlands and riparian forest,” said Ellen Drell, board member of the Willits Environmental Center, one of two groups who filed suit on Aug.28 against Mendocino County for issuing a permit to haul fill without legally required environmental review under CEQA and the Surface Mining Act.
The County rescinded the permit, and hauling from the Mendocino Redwoods Products site stopped. Hauling resumed from a different site the following week. The possibly toxic material is being covered up before it can be tested by the State Water Board.
Regarding the lockdown, Drell said: “Young people are risking their lives for the future of the planet; the agencies could at least do their jobs by protecting the wetlands under their mandate.” The central mission of lead agency Army Corp of Engineers is to ensure “no net loss of wetlands”.
As if ocean acidification and climate change weren’t troubling enough (both of which are caused by still-rising carbon emissions), new research published in Nature finds that ocean acidification will eventually exacerbate global warming, further raising the Earth’s temperature.
Scientists have long known that tiny marine organisms—phytoplankton—are central to cooling the world by emitting an organic compound known as dimethylsulphide (DMS). DMS, which contains sulfur, enters the atmosphere and helps seed clouds, leading to a global cooling effect. In fact, in the past scientists have believed that climate change may actually increase DMS emissions, and offset some global warming, but they did not take into account the impact of acidification.
Researchers, headed by Katharina Six with the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, tested how acidification affects phytoplankton in the laboratory by lowering the pH (i.e. acidifying) in plankton-filled water tanks and measuring DMS emissions. When they set the ocean acidification levels for what is expected by 2100 (under a moderate greenhouse gas scenario) they found that cooling DMS emissions fell.
Plugging the results into global modeling system, Six says, “we get an extra warming of 0.23 to 0.48 degree Celsius from the proposed impact [by 2100],” adding that “less sulphur results in a warming of the Earth surface.” This creates a positive feedback loop that will likely have impacts that are anything but positive, according to scientists.
To date, the world has warmed approximately 0.8 degrees Celsius in the last century with a variety of impacts including worsening severe weather, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and sea ice, and imperiled species.
Six also notes that a warmer world does not necessarily mean a more productive world for phytoplankton as has been argued by researchers in the past.
“In former times it was assumed that phytoplankton potentially growth better in a warmer ocean,” she explained to mongabay.com. “However, the basis for plant growth is the supply with nutrients. As the oceans will stabilize in the warmer climate, fewer nutrients will be transported into the sunlight zone. Earth system models, like the MPI-ESM that was used for our study, project a decrease in primary production of 17 percent at the end of this century for a moderate climate scenario. The impact from climate change alone led to a decrease in DMS emission of 7 percent.”
The results are still preliminary as researchers have yet to test how DMS emissions will by impacted in tropical and subtropical waters, focusing to date on polar and temperate waters. In addition, further modeling should be done in order to understand possible uncertainties according to Six.
Still, the evidence is strong enough that the researchers write in the paper that “this potential climate impact mechanism of ocean acidification should be considered in projections of future climate change.” Essentially raising current estimates for a moderate climate scenario by around 10 percent.
Ocean acidification, which has been dubbed “climate change’s equally evil twin” by U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Jane Lubchenco, is expected to have largely negative impacts on many marine species, including dissolving the shells of crustaceans and molluscs, hampering coral reefs, and even changing how far fish can hear.
So, how do we stop this from happening?
“There is only one answer,” Katharina Six told mongabay.com, “the abatement of fossil fuel emissions.”
Seven environmental activists today stole a ‘Carbon Bomb’ from the offices of transport company Aurizon (link www.aurizon.com.au) in Brisbane, Australia. The action signified the launch of their shop front hunger strike, pressuring Aurizon to withdraw planned capital from the largest coal complex in the world, planned for the Galilee Basin in their state of Queensland. Burning the coal from this complex is forecast to release over 700 million tons of carbon pollution each year, more than the total emissions Australia, the UK or Canada.
The hunger strike is part of the Over Our Dead Bodies (link www.OverOurDeadBodies.net) campaign, run by 40,000-strong Generation Alpha (link www.facebook.com/GenerationAlpha). Campaign coordinator Ben Pennings told the gathering media:
We’re here because Aurizon plan to bail out debt-ridden Indian company GVK, allowing them to dig up the first 3 coal mines in the Galilee Basin. Mining the Galilee is like setting off a bomb. This amount of carbon pollution is a deadly catastrophe, an environmental crime. So we’ve taken this carbon bomb from Aurizon to symbolize our intentions to stop them.
The campaign is designed to provide unique financial pressure on Aurizon, a rail freight company that specializes in coal. Activists in Australia but also internationally are committing to actions on the campaign website (link www.OverOurDeadBodies.net) that will cost Aurizon significant time and money. These include direct action and civil disobedience aimed at delaying infrastructure, hampering day-to-day operations and even targeting the company’s CEO and board members. Mr. Pennings said:
Aurizon have been ignoring the legitimate concerns of the environment movement for too long. So activists around the country are getting ready for direct action, to make the precarious finances of this complex even more so. Governments aren’t protecting our future, so we will.
The activists included former Australian Senator Andrew Bartlett (link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bartlett). Andrew expressed his frustration with the lack of political engagement on climate change, saying:
We will be on a public hunger strike from today, engaging community members to understand that we can’t have the biggest coal complex on the planet, we can’t ignite this carbon bomb, and still avoid catastrophic climate change. We don’t want short-term mining projects that destroy communities and the environment. We want renewable power and long-term sustainable industries integrated into our communities.
