by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 20, 2012 | Mining & Drilling
By Sarah Paulus / American Independent News Network
Two of the country’s largest private water utility companies are participants in a massive lobbying effort to expand controversial shale gas drilling — a heavy industrial activity that promises to enrich the water companies but may also put drinking water resources at risk.
The situation — which some watchdogs describe as a troubling conflict of interest — underscores the complex issues raised by the nationwide push to privatize infrastructure and services like water, prisons, and roads.
The water companies — American Water and Aqua America — are leading drinking water suppliers in Pennsylvania, where drilling is booming. They also sell water to gas companies — which use a drilling technique that requires massive amounts of water — and have expressed interest in treating drilling wastewater, a potentially lucrative opportunity.
These investor-owned, publicly traded water utility companies are also dues-paying “associate members” of the gas industry’s powerful Marcellus Shale Coalition, a fact confirmed by coalition spokesman Travis Windle, who says associate members pay $15,000 annually in dues. “Our associate members are really the backbone of the industry,” adds Windle.
Both water companies serve millions of people across the country — Aqua America operates in 11 states and American Water in more than 30.
The coalition, which is led by major gas producers, contends that “responsible development of natural gas” will bolster the region’s economy while providing an important source of domestic energy. It has reported over $2 million in Pennsylvania lobbying expenditures since 2010.
Aqua America joined the coalition in 2010 and Pennsylvania American Water — a subsidiary of American Water — joined in 2011, according to the coalition’s quarterly magazine, which publishes a full member list in each issue.
Shale gas drillers use a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to extract gas from the Marcellus formation in Pennsylvania. The controversial technique forces millions of gallons of water — mixed with sand and chemicals — into the ground to crack the shale rock and release gas. In addition to the potential risks posed by actual fracturing, the process produces large amounts of toxic wastewater that can be difficult to dispose of safely.
The Environmental Protection Agency is currently conducting a congressionally-mandated study “to investigate the potential adverse impact that hydraulic fracturing may have on water quality and public health.” Pennsylvania is home to three of the seven sites selected for the nationwide study.
Read more from AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/water/155065/shocking_conflict_of_interest%3A_private_water_companies_partner_with_fracking_lobby/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 19, 2012 | Pornography, Repression at Home
By Gail Dines / Counterpunch
As colleges become more corporate, we are hearing more and more stories of academics being sanctioned for having the audacity to speak out against corporate malfeasance. Not only does this limit the free speech of academics, it also serves to scare teachers into adhering to the hegemonic discourse.
The latest example is quite stunning. Jammie Price, a full professor at Appalachian State University, was suspended last month for showing the documentary The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships. Distributed by the Media Education Foundation, one of the most respected producers of progressive documentaries in the country, the film sets out to look at how mainstream pornography has not only become more violent and misogynistic, but is actually in bed with major financial institutions such as credit card companies, venture capitalists, cable companies and hotels (they make more money from porn than mini bars).
After showing the film to 120 students, three evidently complained to the university administration that Dr. Price was showing “inappropriate material” in class. Dr. Price was not allowed to learn the names of the students or to meet with them, was denied a hearing, and was immediately suspended and told that she could not enter any offices or classrooms in the Arts and Sciences buildings. Should she want to obtain “materials, computer files, pick up mail …” she needed to make arrangements to be escorted by a member of the faculty.
How interesting that a university decides that an academic analysis of one of the most profitable industries in the world is “inappropriate.” What exactly are we supposed to teach about? Maybe if Jammie Price had been in a business school and taught a case on how to make a killing in porn, she might have been given a pass. Or maybe, to be on the safe side, Dr. Price should have instead invited a pornographer to class to promote their products. In 2008, the porn press was abuzz with the great news that Joanna Angel, owner of the porn site Burning Angel, had been invited to speak to a human sexuality class at Indiana University. No pretense was made that this was going to be an educational event by the porn news site X Critic, when they wrote, “She will be showing the students clips from her movies, handing out sex toys and enlightening them with a positive view on pornography.”
I wrote a letter of complaint to the president of Indiana University pointing out that the role of a university classroom was to educate the students, not provide a captive audience for capitalists to push their products. The president’s office responded in a rather odd way. They asked the professor to apologize to me for bringing in Joanna Angel, as if this whole case was a personal insult to me. I think we should be speaking about porn in the classroom, but not as a fun industry that sells fantasy, but rather as a global industry that works just like any other industry with business plans, niche markets, venture capitalists and the ever-increasing need to maximize profits.
It seems to me that Price’s crime was to provide a progressive critique of the porn industry, rather than wax lyrically about how porn empowers women sexually. She showed a film that takes an unflinching look at the real porn industry. Instead of claiming that we are all empowered by porn, The Price of Pleasure delves into the underbelly of the industry, illustrating its points with images drawn from some of the most popular porn websites. These are not pretty, nor are they very erotic. We see women being choked with a penis, women smeared in ejaculate, women being slapped and spit upon, and in a particularly horrible scene, a woman retching after she has licked a penis that was just in her anus (called Ass to Mouth in the industry).
I have never before heard of an academic suspended for either talking about or showing porn. This is not really a surprise because the trend in academia is to avoid talking about the actual industry and how it interfaces with mainstream capitalism. At a recent academic conference I attended in London, I found myself surrounded by post-modern academics who could use a good dose of political economy. The plenary session consisted of academics making the argument that there is no “it,” meaning the porn industry, because there are so many producers of porn and just so many types of much porn on the internet, that it is impossible to locate any actual industry. Interesting that while there is no “it,” there are, in fact, porn trade shows, porn business web sites, porn PR companies, porn lobbying groups, and so on. All these things that would suggest that there is indeed a porn business.
The failure to lose sight of how the industry functions has been noted by the pornographers themselves. Andrew Edmond, President and CEO of Flying Crocodile, a $20-million pornography Internet business, explained to Brandweek that “a lot of people [outside adult entertainment] get distracted from the business model by [the sex]. It is just as sophisticated and multilayered as any other market place. We operate just like any Fortune 500 company (Brandweek, October, 2000, 41, 1Q48). Jammie Price did not get distracted by the sex, and for that she paid dearly.
From Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/19/the-shocking-suspension-of-dr-price/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 17, 2012 | Toxification
By Environmental Working Group
An independent scientific panel approved by the DuPont company as part of a class action lawsuit has linked an industrial chemical known as C-8 or PFOA to kidney and testicular cancer in humans.
“Widespread pollution by PFOA should be a wake-up call that our chemical regulation system is severely broken,” said Olga V. Naidenko, Ph.D., a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group (EWG). “It is particularly urgent for the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a legal limit for drinking water pollution by PFOA, which is currently unregulated and never should have come to market.”
EWG has campaigned for nine years to curb the use of PFOA, a toxic perfluorinated chemical whose full name is perfluorooctanoic acid, and to impose a strict cap on its presence in drinking water. As well, EWG has advocated reforms to the federal Toxic Substances Control Act that would require pre-market safety testing of all chemicals.
Emissions of PFOA, once manufactured by DuPont to produce non-stick coatings, have polluted the water of at least nine states and the District of Columbia. As a result of widespread pollution, PFOA and related chemicals are now found in the bodies of more than 99 percent of Americans. Pollution has been particularly pronounced around Parkersburg, W.Va., where a DuPont plant emitted PFOA into the air and Ohio River from the 1950s until recently. Emissions from the plant have been largely eliminated over the past several years under a phase-out agreement between the Environmental Protection Agency and DuPont.
In 2002, communities whose drinking water was polluted with PFOA emissions from the Parkersburg DuPont plant filed a class action lawsuit against the company for contaminating ground water. Two years later, DuPont agreed to a settlement that created a scientific panel to conduct comprehensive detailed studies on PFOA and human health by analyzing data from nearly 70,000 people who live or have lived in six water districts in Ohio and West Virginia in the vicinity of the DuPont plant.
Read more from Ecowatch
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 16, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change
By Sindya N. Bhanoo / The New York Times
Mountain pine beetles attack and kill weak pine trees, boring into bark to lay their eggs. They attack the trees in hordes, and their larvae feed off fungi in the trees.
Now, the beetles are reproducing twice a year instead of once, and millions of trees are dying as a result.
The beetle species is several million years old, and historically larvae grow to be adults in July or August every year. But it has been getting warmer earlier in the year, and larvae mature faster and emerge as early as May. These new beetles then immediately lay eggs, and a second generation of adult beetles emerges as early as July because summers are so warm, said Scott M. Ferrenberg, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an author of a study in the coming issue of The American Naturalist.
The researchers did their work at Niwot Ridge in Boulder County, at an elevation of 10,000 feet. Several decades ago, pine beetles were not found at that elevation, Mr. Ferrenberg said. “The invasion of that habitat above 9,000 feet has happened after several decades of significant warming,” he said.
He called the beetle phenomenon an epidemic, not limited to mountain pine beetles. Other trees are also under stress from other species of beetles.
“Spruce beetles and Douglas fir beetles are at epidemic levels,” he said. And southern pine beetles, typically found in the American South, are moving north.
“People are finding outbreaks in New Jersey,” Mr. Ferrenberg added.
From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/beetles-birth-explosion-puts-pine-trees-under-stress.html?_r=1
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 14, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change, Lobbying
By ENews Park Forest
Without help, more than 50 coral species in U.S. waters are likely to go extinct by the end the century, primarily because of ocean warming, disease and ocean acidification, a government report said today. The National Marine Fisheries Service released a status review of 82 corals that are being considered for protections under the Endangered Species Act following a 2009 petition by the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Coral reefs are at real risk of vanishing in our lifetimes if we don’t act fast,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Endangered Species Act has saved hundreds of species from extinction, but these corals will only benefit if they’re actually protected.”
Of the 82 corals, 56 are likely to be extinct before 2100, the report said. The corals are in U.S. waters, ranging from Florida and Hawaii to U.S. territories in the Caribbean and Pacific. The report notes that the seven Florida and Caribbean corals are extremely likely to go extinct, and five of those corals ranked in the top seven of most imperiled overall. Today’s report makes no recommendation about whether the corals may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
According to the status review, “The combined direct and indirect effects of rising temperature, including increased incidence of disease and ocean acidification, both resulting primarily from anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2, are likely to represent the greatest risks of extinction to all or most of the candidate coral species over the next century.”
Coral reefs are home to 25 percent of marine life and play a vital function in ocean ecosystems. Already one-third of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed, and scientists warn that by mid-century most corals will be in inhospitable waters that are too warm or acidic. Since the 1990s, coral growth has grown sluggish in some areas due to ocean acidification, and mass bleaching events are increasingly frequent.
“I’m eager to show my kids the wonder of a coral reef. I worry that if we wait too long, they’ll never get to experience a healthy reef teeming with colorful life,” said Sakashita. “These delicate corals need help, first with federal protections, and then with dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide pollution.”
The Fisheries Service is accepting comments on the coral status review and management reports until July 31, 2012. Pursuant to a settlement agreement with the Center, the Fisheries Service will make a determination on whether listing is warranted for the corals by Dec. 1, 2012. In 2006, the Center secured protection for staghorn and elkhorn corals, making them the first — and so far, only — corals listed under the Endangered Species Act.
From ENews Park Forest
