Under pressure, Castilla y León government ends mountaintop removal in northwestern Spain

Under pressure, Castilla y León government ends mountaintop removal in northwestern Spain

by | Mar 4, 2014 | Lobbying, The Solution: Resistance

By Amaranta Herrero / eJolt

On the 14th of February, the regional government of Castilla y León cancelled the plan for Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining (MRT) in Laciana Valley (Spain).

During the last twenty years, irreversible changes have been taking place in the Southwestern Cantabrian Mountains, in an area of ​​great ecological value, which is protected by EU environmental legislation.

The extractive technique known as Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining (MTR) has illegally modified during this time the topography and the life of people in Laciana Valley (León). Although it is literally an explosive industrial process, this mining activity developed in relative silence, away from public opinion. In general, MTR operations are remote, located beyond the landscape seen from city centers. At first glance, only a well-trained eye can detect the landscape morphological transformations involved in the amputation of the top of a mountain and its subsequent artificial reconstruction. But for the 10.000 inhabitants directly affected by this activity, mostly connoisseurs of mountain valley profiles, MTR is constantly visible and audible.

In the past two decades, Laciana Valley has fallen into severe socio-economic decline. Coal mining has gradually reduced, partially driven by EU liberalization measures of the energy market that reduce State subsidies for the extraction of coal. Since 1990, coal production has shrunk 67% in Spain. Surface mining in Spain began in the 1970s, but it was not until 1985 that MTR, much less labour-intensive, started replacing underground mining on Laciana’s private land. The number of coal mining jobs were reduced by 85,7% in the last 20 years in Spain. In 2010, the 6,429 jobs in the Spanish coal-mining sector included directives, technicians, administrative stuff and workers from underground mining and MTR.

The local population has been highly polarised with regard to the continued existence of MTR and the future of the valley. Coal mining has been for far too long an economic monoculture in Laciana, maintained by the very close relations between the political and the economic powers in the area. Suspicion of corruption has always surrounded the coal mining sector since the 90s. Victorino Alonso, the owner of Laciana’s MTR company, Coto Minero del Cantábrico, and the main Spanish coal entrepreneur was declared guilty of fraud in 2010. On the 10th of February 2014 all Spanish coal companies have been brought in front of the Court accused of fraud related to Coal Aid.

Laciana MTR mines have been active without the legally required environmental and planning permits. At the same time, these illegal activities have, curiously, been intensively subsidised by the Spanish government and indirectly by the EU. As a result of the illegalities, the biggest private mining company in Spain, Coto Minero del Cantábrico (CMC), was brought before a Spanish court by individuals and local environmental groups. In fact, some of the inhabitants of Laciana Valley together with regional environmental groups, autonomous activists and Members of the European Parliament, have spent twenty years opposing and struggling against this industrial activity. This heterogeneous ecological resistance movement has addressed the destruction of natural resources and environmental services and the residents’ future. They sued the company and the Town Council, appealed to the European Court, wrote articles and documents, tried to reach the media, organised talks, camps, and they have even put in more than one occasion their bodies in the middle to stop the mountain destruction. This movement has fought for a different future, based on economic activities that are truly compatible with the protection of the environment. This local environmental movement in Laciana has also faced an intense process of stigmatisation and scapegoating within the Valley.

In 2006, CMC received the highest environmental fine in the country’s history (approx. €170 million) and was ordered to stop activities by the regional Administrative Court. In November 2011, the European Court of Justice also recognised the environmental crimes in Laciana. Disregarding the legal verdict, the fine remaining unpaid, the company continued MTR activities and planned expansion. This expansion plan had been presented in 2008 by the regional government. It also represented a threat to Laciana’s inhabitants, ecosystems and future, until last 14th of Februrary. With the MTR expansion plan cancelled, Laciana’s people can start a promising transition towards different, diverse and environmentally lower impact economies.

Congratulations to everybody who fought against MTR coal mining in Laciana for their long and intense ecological resistance and their final victory. If we want to promote a new and sustainable energy model, as well as having a chance of avoiding runaway climate change, it is a must to challenge the coal industry, to end fossil fuels subsidies and to leave coal underground.

From eJolt: http://www.ejolt.org/2014/02/victory-no-more-mountaintop-removal-coal-mining-in-laciana-valley-spain/

Peru allows gas company to invade “protected” indigenous reserve

by | Feb 4, 2014 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy

By David Hill / Mongabay

The Peruvian government has approved plans for gas company Pluspetrol to move deeper into a supposedly protected reserve for indigenous peoples and the buffer zone of the Manu National Park in the Amazon rainforest.

The approval follows the government rescinding a highly critical report on the potential impacts of the operations by the Culture Ministry (MINCU), the resignation of the Culture Minister and other Ministry personnel, and repeated criticism from Peruvian and international civil society.

A subsequent report by MINCU requested that Pluspetrol abandon plans to conduct seismic tests in one small part of the reserve because of the “possible presence of [indigenous] people in isolation,” but didn’t object to tests across a much wider area. In addition to the seismic tests, the planned operations include building a 10.5km flow-line and drilling 18 exploratory wells at six locations—all of them in the reserve which lies immediately to the west of the Manu National Park and acts as part of its buffer zone (see map below).

The government approved the plans on January 27th when the Energy Ministry issued a resolution on the operation’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), written by Pluspetrol together with consultancy Environmental Resources Management.

The decision was swiftly condemned by AIDESEP. The national indigenous organization accused the government and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which has played a key role in gas operations in that region to date, of violating their commitments.

AIDESEP writes that “many ‘isolated’ indigenous people have already died in the name of supposed ‘progress.’ Enough. If one more brother dies, or is taken ill, or there is conflict, we will hold the state, the gas companies, the IDB and those who irresponsibly promote these policies responsible.”

The Energy Ministry could only approve Pluspetrol’s EIA following favorable opinions from other state institutions such as MINCU, the National Water Authority and, because the buffer zone of a national park is involved, the National Service for Protected Natural Areas (SERNANP).

But MINCU’s initial report, dated July 2013, effectively made it impossible for the operations to go ahead, stating that the impacts on the health of the reserve’s inhabitants could be severe, and warning that the Nahua could be “devastated” and the Kirineri and the Nanti made “extinct.”

Opposition to the operations has included appeals to the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

CERD responded by urging Peru to “immediately suspend” the operations. At the end of a visit in December, the UN Rapporteur recommended that the Peruvian government do an “exhaustive study” and that it shouldn’t proceed unless it ensured indigenous peoples’ rights won’t be violated.

The planned operations constitute an expansion of what is known as the Camisea gas project, Peru’s biggest energy development. There are already several well platforms in the indigenous reserve, which have been producing gas for years.

Almost three-quarters of Pluspetrol’s concession overlaps the reserve—officially called the Kugapakori-Nahua-Nanti and Others’ Territorial Reserve—which was created in 1990 and given greater legal protection in 2003.

The reserve’s inhabitants live in what Peruvian law calls “voluntary isolation” or “initial contact,” having sporadic, little or no contact with outsiders and therefore lacking immunological defenses.

Pluspetrol admitted in its EIA that contact with the reserve’s inhabitants is “probable” during the course of its operations, and that such peoples in general are vulnerable to “massive deaths” from transmitted diseases.

From Mongabay: “Gas company to drill in Manu National Park buffer zone, imperiling indigenous people“

Coal-processing chemicals spill into West Virginia river, polluting drinking water for 200,000 people

by | Jan 10, 2014 | Toxification

By Ashley Southall and Timothy Williams / New York Times

Nearly 200,000 people in Charleston, W.Va., and nine surrounding counties were without drinking water on Friday after a chemical spill contaminated supplies, the West Virginia governor’s office said.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said early Friday in a statement that the federal government had approved a request of assistance in dealing with the chemical spill into the Elk River, which flows into the Kanawha River at Charleston.

“West Virginians in the affected service areas are urged not to use tap water for drinking, cooking, washing or bathing,” Mr. Tomblin said in declaring a state of emergency. The warning affected customers of the West Virginia American Water Company in Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane Counties.

Many stores in the area quickly ran out of bottled water Thursday night as residents rushed to stock up, according to local news media reports. Restaurants and businesses closed, and The Associated Press reported that schools as well as the State Legislature had canceled sessions on Friday.

The spill was discovered Thursday at a storage facility about a mile north of a water treatment plant on the Elk River, where a 48,000-gallon tank began leaking 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol, or MCHM, a compound used to wash coal of impurities, according to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

The chemical leaked from a hole in the bottom of the tank and then filled an overflow container before spilling into the river, said Thomas J. Aluise, a spokesman for the agency.

It is not clear how much of the chemical flowed into the river, which Mr. Aluise said looked like “cooking oil floating on top of the water.”

The chemical, which smells like licorice, is not toxic, but can cause headaches, eye and skin irritation, and difficulty breathing from prolonged exposures at high concentrations, according to the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists.

Freedom Industries, the company that owns the storage tank, has not responded to emails seeking comment.

Liza Cordeiro, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Education, said schools in at least five counties would be closed Friday.

On the Facebook page of the West Virginia American Water Company, dozens of residents expressed concern that they had not been immediately told about the chemical leak or the potential for health risks.

“Yeah, so I’m six months pregnant and drank tap water at a restaurant about an hour before the notice was sent out,” one woman wrote.

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/us/west-virginia-chemical-spill.html?_r=0

ELN launches attack against oil pipeline infrastructure in Colombia

ELN launches attack against oil pipeline infrastructure in Colombia

by | Jan 4, 2014 | Colonialism & Conquest, Property & Material Destruction

By Andrew Wight & Taran Volckhausen / Colombia Reports

Colombia’s second largest rebel group the ELN detonated explosives Wednesday at four crude oil holding pools along the Caño Limon – Coveñas pipeline in the state of North Santander.

A large blaze caused by the attacks created panic in the local population, who were forced to flee their homes, according to local media reports.

Authorities were taking measures to prevent further environmental damage after the attacks as well as reconstruct the damaged holding pools.

The attack marks the first attack by the ELN in 2014, although the rebel group has been coordinating attacks on Colombia’s oil production infrastructure for the past few months, declaring war against multinational oil companies operating in the country in November.

In a statement released on the ELN website Tuesday, Colombia’s second largest guerrilla group declared war on the multinationals and oil companies “plundering” the country’s natural resources.

The ELN’s Eastern War Front Commander, Manuel Vasquez Castaño, confirmed that a slew of recent attacks directed at Colombia’s oil infrastructure have been intended to hurt the pockets of multinationals active in the country.

Once again, we reaffirm our belligerent stance to confront multinationals and their repressive apparatus: the plunderers and exploiters of natural resources,” he said. “Colombia is a colony of North American imperialism — bourgeois elites in power sold to the highest bidder and in the name of democracy deliver natural resources to their Yankee masters.

The statement went on to discuss the high prices of Colombia’s internal combustible market, which lead to nationwide strikes in the trucking sector this past summer and have been sited by farm organizers involved in ongoing negotiations with the government as a reason for the financial insolubility of the agricultural market.

“We are one of the top oil-producing countries worldwide,” said Vasquez, “but Colombia has (some of) the world’s most expensive gasoline.”

The rebel group has asked for broad talks along the lines of the peace deal currently being negotiated in Havana, Cuba between government officials and the FARC, Colombia’s largest rebel group.

But despite agreeing to initiate the process, the Colombian government has yet to reach out to the ELN central command, which has repeatedly called for the start of discussions, and recently launched an offensive against oil and gas pipelines in rural Colombia, in what is believed to be a measure to pressure the Colombian government into talks.

Despite the ELN’s efforts, Colombia’s state-owned Ecopetrol oil company reported a net profit of $2.05 billion in the third quarter of 2013 and record levels of oil production.

The Colombian government has yet to respond to the ELN’s most recent announcement, and hasn’t indicated that any plan to develop talks will be forthcoming.

The ELN, which continues to employ the anti-capitalist rhetoric of its origins as a Catholic-Marxist revolutionary group, has since become dependent on the illicit mining and gold trade, running operations throughout the country that exploit Colombia’s rural poor and generate sizable revenue streams for the group’s other activities.

From Systemic Capital

90 Corporations Responsible For 66% of CO2 Emissions

90 Corporations Responsible For 66% of CO2 Emissions

by | Nov 25, 2013 | Climate Change, NEWS

By Suzanne Goldenberg / The Guardian

The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.

The companies range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon and BP – to state-owned and government-run firms.

The analysis, which was welcomed by the former vice-president Al Gore as a “crucial step forward” found that the vast majority of the firms were in the business of producing oil, gas or coal, found the analysis, which has been published in the journal Climatic Change.

“There are thousands of oil, gas and coal producers in the world,” climate researcher and author Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in Colorado said. “But the decision makers, the CEOs, or the ministers of coal and oil if you narrow it down to just one person, they could all fit on a Greyhound bus or two.”

Half of the estimated emissions were produced just in the past 25 years – well past the date when governments and corporations became aware that rising greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal and oil were causing dangerous climate change.

Many of the same companies are also sitting on substantial reserves of fossil fuel which – if they are burned – puts the world at even greater risk of dangerous climate change.

Climate change experts said the data set was the most ambitious effort so far to hold individual carbon producers, rather than governments, to account.

The United Nations climate change panel, the IPCC, warned in September that at current rates the world stood within 30 years of exhausting its “carbon budget” – the amount of carbon dioxide it could emit without going into the danger zone above 2C warming. The former US vice-president and environmental champion, Al Gore, said the new carbon accounting could re-set the debate about allocating blame for the climate crisis.

Leaders meeting in Warsaw for the UN climate talks this week clashed repeatedly over which countries bore the burden for solving the climate crisis – historic emitters such as America or Europe or the rising economies of India and China.

Gore in his comments said the analysis underlined that it should not fall to governments alone to act on climate change.

“This study is a crucial step forward in our understanding of the evolution of the climate crisis. The public and private sectors alike must do what is necessary to stop global warming,” Gore told the Guardian. “Those who are historically responsible for polluting our atmosphere have a clear obligation to be part of the solution.”

Between them, the 90 companies on the list of top emitters produced 63% of the cumulative global emissions of industrial carbon dioxide and methane between 1751 to 2010, amounting to about 914 gigatonne CO2 emissions, according to the research. All but seven of the 90 were energy companies producing oil, gas and coal. The remaining seven were cement manufacturers.

The list of 90 companies included 50 investor-owned firms – mainly oil companies with widely recognised names such as Chevron, Exxon, BP , and Royal Dutch Shell and coal producers such as British Coal Corp, Peabody Energy and BHP Billiton.

Some 31 of the companies that made the list were state-owned companies such as Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, Russia’s Gazprom and Norway’s Statoil.

Nine were government run industries, producing mainly coal in countries such as China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea and Poland, the host of this week’s talks.

Experts familiar with Heede’s research and the politics of climate change said they hoped the analysis could help break the deadlock in international climate talks.

“It seemed like maybe this could break the logjam,” said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard. “There are all kinds of countries that have produced a tremendous amount of historical emissions that we do not normally talk about. We do not normally talk about Mexico or Poland or Venezuela. So then it’s not just rich v poor, it is also producers v consumers, and resource rich v resource poor.”

Michael Mann, the climate scientist, said he hoped the list would bring greater scrutiny to oil and coal companies’ deployment of their remaining reserves. “What I think could be a game changer here is the potential for clearly fingerprinting the sources of those future emissions,” he said. “It increases the accountability for fossil fuel burning. You can’t burn fossil fuels without the rest of the world knowing about it.”

Others were less optimistic that a more comprehensive accounting of the sources of greenhouse gas emissions would make it easier to achieve the emissions reductions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

John Ashton, who served as UK’s chief climate change negotiator for six years, suggested that the findings reaffirmed the central role of fossil fuel producing entities in the economy.

“The challenge we face is to move in the space of not much more than a generation from a carbon-intensive energy system to a carbonneutral energy system. If we don’t do that we stand no chance of keeping climate change within the 2C threshold,” Ashton said.

“By highlighting the way in which a relatively small number of large companies are at the heart of the current carbon-intensive growth model, this report highlights that fundamental challenge.”

Meanwhile, Oreskes, who has written extensively about corporate-funded climate denial, noted that several of the top companies on the list had funded the climate denial movement.

“For me one of the most interesting things to think about was the overlap of large scale producers and the funding of disinformation campaigns, and how that has delayed action,” she said.

The data represents eight years of exhaustive research into carbon emissions over time, as well as the ownership history of the major emitters.

The companies’ operations spanned the globe, with company headquarters in 43 different countries. “These entities extract resources from every oil, natural gas and coal province in the world, and process the fuels into marketable products that are sold to consumers on every nation on Earth,” Heede writes in the paper.

The largest of the investor-owned companies were responsible for an outsized share of emissions. Nearly 30% of emissions were produced just by the top 20 companies, the research found.

By Heede’s calculation, government-run oil and coal companies in the former Soviet Union produced more greenhouse gas emissions than any other entity – just under 8.9% of the total produced over time. China came a close second with its government-run entities accounting for 8.6% of total global emissions.

ChevronTexaco was the leading emitter among investor-owned companies, causing 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions to date, with Exxon not far behind at 3.2%. In third place, BP caused 2.5% of global emissions to date.

The historic emissions record was constructed using public records and data from the US department of energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Centre, and took account of emissions all along the supply chain.

The centre put global industrial emissions since 1751 at 1,450 gigatonnes.

From The Guardian

Photo by Gene Gallin on Unsplash