Water

This article originally appeared in Mongabay. Editor’s note: We know less about the bottom of the sea than we know about outer space. We really require no scientific evidence to know that mining is bad for the environment wherever it occures. It should not be done on land, under the sea or on other planets. The ISA needs to reject the deep sea mining industry’s claims that mining for metals on the ocean floor is a partial solution to the climate crisis. As Upton Sinclair said, “it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” We can see this with the archeologist working for Lithium America in Thacker Pass. An interesting film to watch on the twisted relationship between science and industry is The Last Winter . ...

Original Press Release Cas Yikh of the Gidimt’en Clan are counting on supporters to go ALL OUT in a mobilization for the biggest battle yet to protect our sacred headwaters, Wedzin Kwa. We have remained steadfast in our fight for self-determination, and we are still unceded, undefeated, sovereign and victorious. In January 2019, when Gidimt’en Checkpoint was raided by the RCMP, enforcing an injunction for Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline, your communities rose up in solidarity! ...

Over the past three weeks Line 3 resistance has continued in Minnesota and around the country. Since our last weekly recap… The harm Line 3 has already caused Minnesota’s land and waters became more clear… The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) announced that it had ordered Enbridge Energy to pay $3.32 million for breaching an aquifer during construction last winter. Their failure to follow environmental laws on that occasion resulted in millions of gallons of groundwater flowing out of the aquifer, posing a risk to rare wetlands nearby. Watch a statement from Winona LaDuke about the incident here. ...

Editor’s note: Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization. Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities. Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence. Derrick Jensen (2006): Endgame vol. 1, p. IX ...

This article originally appeared in Yes! Solutions Journalism. Featured image: Local residents and kids enjoy the recreational benefits of the flowing river resulting from the planned water releases. PHOTO COURTESY OF RAISE THE RIVER, JESÚS SALAZAR “It’s not only about wildlife, or birds and trees. It’s also about the people.” By Lourdes Medrano In late spring, Antonia Torres González’ tears rolled freely at the rare sight before her: the Colorado River flowed again in what is usually a parched delta. ...

This article originally appeared in Resilience. Editor’s note: In order for the planet to survive, we must act in its defense. We can not rely on governments or corporations to do it. This is why Deep Green Resistance is organizing actions to confront the power structures—patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, and civilization—largely responsible for the plunder of land and people. By Alan Jay Richard This is a story of victory for the earth and of the end of the Keystone XL pipeline. It also involves the Dakota Access pipeline and the Standing Rock Lakota reservation, indeed the entire world, all of which is threatened by our desperate last burst of fossil fuel exploitation. It is a story of what the dogged persistence and creativity of indigenous people and their allies can do against the kind of power we’ve been told is impossible to resist. But it’s a story without a guaranteed ending. The ending depends on us. ...

This article originally appeared in The Conversation. Editor’s note: “That repair should be the main goal of the environmental movement. Unlike the Neverland of the Tilters’ solutions, we have the technology for prairie and forest restoration, and we know how to use it. And the grasses will be happy to do most of the work for us.” “To actively repair the planet requires understanding the damage. The necessary repair—the return of forests, prairies, and wetlands—could happen over a reasonable fifty to one hundred years if we were to voluntarily reduce our numbers.” Deep Green Resistance ...

This article originally appeared in Truthout. Featured image: On September 7, 2021, Water Protectors erected multiple blockades at a major U.S.-Canadian tar sands terminal in Clearbrook, Minnesota, in direct opposition to Enbridge’s Line 3. Courtesy of the Giniw Collective. By Kelly Hayes, Truthout Amid record hurricanes, wildfires and droughts, battles are being waged over the fate of the Earth. Many of those battles are being fought by Indigenous people, and by others whose relationship to life, land and one another compels them to push back against an extractive, death-making economy that renders people and ecosystems disposable. On the front lines of the struggle to halt construction of Enbridge’s new Line 3 pipeline — which would bring nearly a million barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta, Canada, to Superior, Wisconsin — Water Protectors have locked themselves to excavators and drills, and overturned cars and barrels of cement, while also deploying aerial blockades, including elaborate tripods and tree-sits. In scattered encampments that run along a 300-mile stretch of pipeline construction, a culture defined by mutual aid, and a spiritual and physical struggle to defend the Earth, has held strong in the face of brutality and an increasingly entrenched alliance between police and the corporate forces fueling climate catastrophe. ...

World congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) calling for reforms to the International Seabed Authority (ISA). “Deep seabed mining is an avoidable environmental disaster,” said one expert on global ocean policy. Featured image: A pair of fish swim near the ocean floor off the coast of Mauritius. A motion calling for an end to deep sea mining of minerals was adopted at the world congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature this week. (Photo: Roman Furrer/Flickr/cc) ...

A subsidiary of the San Miguel Corporation, one of the largest companies in the Philippines, has proposed a $500 million hydroelectric project that will overlap with a national park on Panay Island. Northwest Panay Peninsula Natural Park holds some of the central Philippines’ last stands of intact lowland rainforest, is home to endangered species including hornbills and the Visayan warty pig, and is a vital watershed for Panay and neighboring islands. The project is still not approved, and a growing coalition of activists and local governments opposes the plan. Update: On Aug. 10, the village governments of Naboay and Malay publicly released resolutions opposing the hydroelectric project, citing concerns about the project’s potential impacts on the Northwest Panay Peninsula Natural Park, municipal and agricultural water supplies, and the area’s indigenous Ati communities. ...