It's All About the Framing: How Polls and the Media Misrepresent the Keystone XL [Tar Sands] [Oil] Pipeline by Liz Barratt-Brown / Switchboard NRDC

First of all, you won’t find tar sands mentioned in any of the polling.  And in most polls, you won’t even find oil.  It’s just the Keystone XL pipeline, no context, no mention of what it will carry, and certainly no mention of the environmental risks of building a massive pipeline to carry toxic tar sands sludge through the heartland of America to the gulf of Mexico, where it would be exported out of the U.S. Tar Sands Destruction in Canada
The question asked by two recent polls, one by Rasmussen and the other by the National Journal, was more or less, “Do you support or oppose building the Keystone XL pipeline?”   And the Rasmussen poll also asks if job creation is more important than protecting the environment, posing these two goals as  oppositional.
Most Americans don't see it that way.  In our opinion research and other opinion research, such as the major new survey in the West, Americans overwhelmingly believe that a strong economy and the environment can go hand in hand.  And they show a real concern for protecting resources, such as our water supply, from degradation.  But both the Rasmussen and the National Journal polls show a majority of Americans in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline.
But are they really?   
What if the pollsters changed the question to more accurately represent the actual project and inserted “tar sands oil pipeline”?  What if they described to the public that the pipeline would jeopardize one of America’s most important freshwater aquifers, the Ogallala?  What if they were told that a first pipeline just like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and built by the same foreign company, TransCanada, had had over 12 spills in the U.S. (30 if you count Canada) in just its first year of operation?  What if they were told that the oil is not really oil but a toxic sludge that is largely strip mined from under the Boreal forest in Canada and has to be diluted with toxic chemicals and pushed through pipelines at high temperature and pressure in pipelines only regulated to carry conventional oil?  And what if the public were given the opportunity to choose a tar sands oil pipeline or increasing our reliance on homegrown renewable energy?
No poll has set this tar sands pipeline in any kind of context.  Instead most of the questions are preceded or followed by generic questions about jobs and the economy or with questions about whether the country is going in the right direction.
So, without context, what do you think most Americans would first think of when asked about a pipeline?
Jobs and the economy.
And that is just the framing they have also been hearing again and again from the media.
Take jobs as an example.  Job creation has been the major argument put forward by pipeline proponents.  Even though TransCanada is on record admitting that there would in fact be no more than 6,500 jobs over two years and only hundreds of permanent jobs, that has not stopped the company, the American Petroleum Institute, Republicans on the Hill and the Republican Presidential candidates from saying the pipeline would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and putting it forward as a national jobs plan rather than the single construction project that it is.  The jobs estimates have been so wild that Stephen Colbert couldn’t resist poking fun at the million jobs pipeline.
Lots of Americans are suffering right now and jobs creation must be a top priority but at what price and who benefits?  The one independent study that has been done on the jobs issue, by Cornell Global Labor Institute, found that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be a jobs killer because it would suppress clean energy jobs and because inevitable spills would cost jobs in other sectors of the economy.   When all of the risk is being underwritten by American families and the major beneficiaries are the major oil companies, you have to ask is this good for our economy in the long run?  Roger Toussaint of the Transit Workers of America said it best when he said, “We want jobs but not as gravediggers for the planet”.  
So let’s dig in a bit regarding what the public has been hearing.
Media Matters, a nonprofit organization that tracks the media, released a survey that analyzed coverage of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from August 1 to December 31, 2011.  They found that the media overwhelmingly framed the pipeline as a jobs issue.  In 33% of the broadcast coverage, the highly inflated jobs numbers were repeated verbatim.  In none of this coverage was any criticism of those figures mentioned.  It was not much better for cable news.  In 45% of the coverage, the figures were repeated verbatim.  And only 11% of the coverage mentioned any criticism.  Fox News repeated the jobs numbers more than all the other TV networks combined.  Print news was not much better, with 29% repeating the jobs figures verbatim and only 5% mentioning any criticism.
It also seems to matter who you interview.
Here is a figure that really made me shake my head  -- 79% of the time, broadcast news reporting on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline interviewed a pipeline proponent.  Only 7% of the time did they interview a tar sands pipeline opponent.  Cable news was not much better:  59% of the coverage featured proponents and only 16% featured opponents.  Print news did slightly better with 45% featuring proponents and 31% featuring opponents.
And this was over the period of time when there were 1250 peaceful protesters arrested in front of the White House and then a few months later when nearly 15,000 people gathered and encircled the White House opposing the pipeline.   It was during the months when an Inspector General investigation was launched into the State Department mishandling of the environmental review. And it covered the period when the President declared that more environmental studies needed to be conducted to understand the risks of the pipeline to the American public and find a new route that avoided the sensitive Ogallala and Sandhills regions of Nebraska.
Media Matters collected data on how jobs and energy security mentions compared to environmental mentions.  In broadcast, cable, and print respectively, jobs were mentioned 67%, 77%, and 68% of the time.  Energy security was mentioned 22%, 28%, and 54% respectively.  And environment was mentioned 17%, 34%, and 65%.  Coverage of the State Department mishandling of the review process was scarcely mentioned at all.
What’s more is that since Media Matters did their survey, the rhetoric around the pipeline has become even more extreme and even venues like the New York Times, which has been one of the exceptions in providing fair coverage of the pipeline, are running political stories about the pipeline that don’t include any environmental perspective.
So it is not surprising that when Americans are polled by Rasmussen and the National Journal, where they throw out a few quick questions or maybe just one question on the pipeline, we’re getting higher than expected levels of support.  Given the Media Matters survey, I am frankly surprised the numbers aren’t worse.
I went to google Speaker Boehner’s statements on Keystone XL and I found that “Keystone” is actually one of the words most frequently associated with the Speaker (after crying, birthday song, and payroll taxes). That’s because he and the Republicans in Congress have taken up the pipeline as a holy crucible.  The reality is that the “Keystone Energy Project” – as he likes to describe it (notice we lose even the mention of pipeline) – is the top bidding of the oil industry.  After defeating the climate legislation on the Hill, there has been no higher priority.   And in addition to the lopsided media coverage, Americans have also been deluged with ads about the benefits of the pipeline. 
Fortunately, most Americans have a heavy dose of skepticism when it comes to the oil industry.  So maybe, just maybe, when people hear the pollsters’ question, they hesitate for a moment and wonder what is all this pipeline fuss really about.
So what can we conclude?  I’d wager that if you ask people if they think building a new pipeline will create jobs, they will inevitably say yes.  But if you were to provide context and ask them if they wanted to risk their drinking water, greater energy self-reliance, and providing a future for our kids that does not trade off our climate and drinking water to line the pockets of the multi-national oil companies, I suspect they’d say no.  
There desperately needs to be an improvement in both poll taking and in media coverage so that there can be a fair and balanced debate about this tar sands mega pipeline.  So far, the debate has been anything but balanced and that does the American public a great disservice.
Addendum:  On February 6, Politico reported that a Hart poll showed that once independents better understand the pro and con arguments for the tar sands pipeline, they agree with the President's decision to delay the pipeline by a margin of 47% to 36% (Democrats are already on side in strong margins).  They are particularly concerned that risks to water supplies from pipeline spills, especially over the heartland's Ogallala aquifer, be addressed.  The poll was conducted in late January in Colorado, Michigan, Iowa, and Ohio.

© 2012 NRDC

Liz Barratt-Brown has worked with NRDC’s International Program for the last 15 years. When Liz first came to NRDC, she worked with Canadians to stem acid rain. More recently, she has worked to protect its ancient forests – from the coastal rainforests of British Columbia to the Boreal forest that circles the top of the planet.  Right now she is working on the Alberta tar sands, an area of the boreal forest that is being torn up to produce oil to feed our relentless thirst for our cars, airplanes and trucks.

House Republicans are once again talking about weighing down the tax relief bill with riders designed to force the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and block clean air standards. by Frances Beinecke / NDRC/ Common Dreams

Published on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 by The Switchboard / NRDC Blog

Keep the Tax Bill Clean: Republicans Should Not Permit the Keystone XL Pipeline

by Frances Beinecke

House Republicans are once again talking about weighing down the tax relief bill with riders designed to force the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and block clean air standards. But, even these lawmakers seem to recognize the public won’t like their political maneuverings.
Despite the trouble they got into in December over holding up the tax cut, GOP leaders want to use an effort to bring tax relief to millions of Americans—something even they say is an urgent matter—to attach a policy rider that would override President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Keystone XL pipeline has nothing to do with the tax code, and neither this nor any other policy rider belongs on a bill to provide a tax cut that so many Americans are waiting for.  Getting a tax-cut bill through Congress is already difficult enough because of debates about how to pay for it. No one serious about supporting tax relief would make the bill even more controversial by adding an unrelated rider. A rider is simply a political maneuver to pick a fight with the president.
Congress should keep it clean. It shouldn’t consider the Keystone rider or any other unrelated measures like the effort to block clean air standards that would limit industrial pollution.
President Obama made the point well and clearly in his State of the Union when he said, “Let’s agree right here, right now:  No side issues.  No drama.  Pass the payroll tax cut without delay.”
The language Republicans are touting to approve the pipeline was proposed by Representative Lee Terry (R-NE). Republicans describe the Terry language as giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the power to decide whether the Keystone XL should proceed or not.
Let’s be clear. The Terry measure does no such thing.
Instead, the bill mandates approval of the project. It states: “The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission shall, not later than 30 days after receipt of an application thereof, issue a permit for the construction, operation, and maintenance of the oil pipeline.”
The Terry bill is the equivalent of Congress passing a bill that gives you the right to vote, but requires you by law to vote for Obama. No one would describe that as giving you the power to make a decision. Yet Republicans describe the Terry language as giving FERC power, and many in the press have unthinkingly echoed that assertion.
In reality, Terry’s reference to FERC is just a ruse to hide the real effect of the bill: turning Congress into a permitting body. Representative Terry has gone so far as to say, “It seems to me that it makes more sense that we let the experts on pipelines make decision on whether this is a safe and sound pipeline as opposed to a political entity worried about November elections.”
The pipeline decision should indeed be in the hands of experts, but Terry himself would prevent exactly that. If Terry has his way, Congress will be approving the pipeline. His language gives FERC no authority to make a decision; it either has to sign off on the pipeline in 30 days or the pipeline gets approved without them.
But the fact that Republicans lawmakers feel the need to make it look like they are giving authority to a government agency instead of to themselves signals something important: Even they know Americans don’t want Congress to be in the business of issuing permits.  Hence the FERC fig leaf.
Speaker Boehner has said that if language approved Keystone XL doesn’t go on the tax bill, it will be added to the transportation bill—another measure Americans needs that’s already far behind schedule. A Keystone XL rider on the transportation bill would be just as irresponsible as one on the tax bill.
Republicans in Congress already forced the current decision on Keystone XL by mandating a decision before as assessment was completed and before the full route was even determined. The President has no choice at the point but to deny the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline permit. Congress should respect that determination—and preserve the health and safety of American farmland and our climate—instead of trying to undermine it through legislative maneuvers.

.Canadian Native Leaders and Activists Oppose Tar Sands Pipeline / The Real News Network / Common Dreams

Published on Thursday, September 29, 2011 by The Real News Network

Canadian Native Leaders and Activists Oppose Tar Sands Pipeline

180 protestors arrested as protest condemns PM Harper tar sands plans

© 2011 The Real News Network

The Decline of the Public Good / Robert Reich Blog

The Decline of the Public Good

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 Meryl Streep’s eery reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady” brings to mind Thatcher’s most famous quip, “there is no such thing as ‘society.’” None of the dwindling herd of Republican candidates has quoted her yet but they might as well considering their unremitting bashing of everything public.
What defines a society is a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions — public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.
Public institutions are supported by all taxpayers, and are available to all. If the tax system is progressive, those who better off (and who, presumably, have benefitted from many of these same public institutions) help pay for everyone else.
“Privatiize” means pay-for-it-yourself. The practical consequence of this in an economy whose wealth and income are now more concentrated than any time in 90 years is to make high-quality public goods available to fewer and fewer.
In fact, much of what’s called “public” is increasingly a private good paid for by users — ever-higher tolls on public highways and public bridges, higher tuitions at so-called public universities, higher admission fees at public parks and public museums.
Much of the rest of what’s considered “public” has become so shoddy that those who can afford to do so find private alternatives. As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, they pay premium rates for private care.
Gated communities and office parks now come with their own manicured lawns and walkways, security guards, and backup power systems.
Why the decline of public institutions? The financial squeeze on government at all levels since 2008 explains only part of it. The slide really started more than three decades ago with so-called “tax revolts” by a middle class whose earnings had stopped advancing even though the economy continued to grow. Most families still wanted good public services and institutions but could no longer afford the tab.
Since the late 1970s, almost all the gains from growth have gone to the top. But as the upper middle class and the rich began shifting to private institutions, they withdrew political support for public ones. In consequence, their marginal tax rates dropped — setting off a vicious cycle of diminishing revenues and deteriorating quality, spurring more flight from public institutions. Tax revenues from corporations also dropped as big companies went global — keeping their profits overseas and their tax bills to a minimum.
But that’s not the whole story. America no longer values public goods as we did decades ago.
The great expansion of public institutions in America began in the early years of 20th century when progressive reformers championed the idea that we all benefit from public goods. Excellent schools, roads, parks, playgrounds, and transit systems would knit the new industrial society together, create better citizens, and generate widespread prosperity. Education, for example, was less a personal investment than a public good — improving the entire community and ultimately the nation.
In subsequent decades — through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War — this logic was expanded upon. Strong public institutions were seen as bulwarks against, in turn, mass poverty, fascism, and then communism. The public good was palpable: We were very much a society bound together by mutual needs and common threats. (It was no coincidence that the greatest extensions of higher education after World War II were the GI Bill and the National Defense Education Act, and the largest public works project in history called the National Defense Interstate Highway Act.)
But in a post-Cold War America distended by global capital, distorted by concentrated income and wealth, undermined by unlimited campaign donations, and rocked by a wave of new immigrants easily cast by demagogues as “them,” the notion of the public good has faded. Not even Democrats any longer use the phrase “the public good.” Public goods are now, at best, “public investments.” Public institutions have morphed into “public-private partnerships;” or, for Republicans, simply “vouchers.”
Mitt Romney’s speaks derisively of what he terms the Democrats’ “entitlement” society in contrast to his “opportunity” society. At least he still envisions a society.  But he hasn’t explained how ordinary Americans will be able to take advantage of good opportunities without good public schools, affordable higher education, good roads, and adequate health care.
His “entitlements” are mostly a mirage anyway. Medicare is the only entitlement growing faster than the GDP but that’s because the costs of health care are growing faster than the economy. That means any attempt to turn Medicare into a voucher — without either raising the voucher in tandem with those costs or somehow taming  them — will just reduce the elderly’s access to health care. Social Security hasn’t contributed to the budget deficit; it’s had surpluses for years.
Other safety nets are in tatters. Unemployment insurance reaches just 40 percent of the jobless these days (largely because eligibility requires having had a steady full-time job for a number of years rather than, as with most people, a string of jobs or part-time work).
What could Mitt be talking about? Outside of defense, domestic discretionary spending is down sharply as a percent of the economy. Add in declines in state and local spending, and total public spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research has dropped from 12 percent of GDP in the 1970s to less than 3 percent by 2011.
Only in one respect is Romney right. America has created a whopping entitlement for the biggest Wall Street banks and their top executives — who, unlike most of the rest of us, are no longer allowed to fail. They can also borrow from the Fed at almost no cost, then lend the money out at 3 to 6 percent.
All told, Wall Street’s entitlement is the biggest offered by the federal government, even though it doesn’t show up in the budget. And it’s not even a public good. It’s just private gain.
We’re losing public goods available to all, supported by the tax payments of all and especially the better off. In its place we have private goods available to the very rich, supported by the rest of us.

World Peace Must Start with Environmental Justice by Kumi Naidoo / Vancouver Sun / Common Dreams

Published on Friday, September 16, 2011 by Vancouver Sun

World Peace Must Start with Environmental Justice

by Kumi Naidoo

For the past week, the world has reflected on the tragedy of 9/11 and the consequences of that fateful day. To my mind, we talk more about security than peace now. And we ignore the role that environmental justice can play in achieving world peace.
It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that climate change will exacerbate global conflicts. And our reliance on fossil fuels and unconventional oil deposits - like those in the oilsands or the Arctic - will only accelerate climate change.
Just look at Darfur and Somalia where resource wars are already underway as a result of climate change; and sadly those that are suffering first and most brutally are those that have been least responsible for the climate chaos we find ourselves in.
Choosing clean energy alternatives and a green economy offers a multiplicity of solutions for the planet. In turning away from fossil fuels and burning less carbon dioxide, we save the environment, we create jobs, and we save lives.
Forty years after it was founded, Greenpeace is as relevant as ever in drawing the links between peace and environment. In 2007, United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon said, "We need you, Greenpeace, to mobilize public opinion and enable politicians to do the right thing."
In Canada, we are working with industry, government and first nations to create sustainable forestry practices.
The landmark Great Bear Rainforest Agreement in British Columbia is seen as a "greenprint" for successful forest conservation worldwide. It will preserve close to three million hectares of rainforest - an area larger than Prince Edward Island - from logging.
Similarly, the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement signed last year includes an immediate moratorium on logging in 28 million hectares of forest. This isn't just trees either, but wildlife habitat and the lungs of the planet.
These agreements demonstrate that environment and economy can be highly compatible under the right conditions. We can have economic prosperity and environmental protection at the same time.
In 1990, Greenpeace founder Bob Hunter wrote: "The idea exists that the ecology movement is a late-blooming fad, something to do with hippies; a fad, moreover, that will vanish the moment serious jobs-versus-nature battles come down after the first macro waves of recession."
And yet, here we are. While political and economic crises ebb and flow, the environmental movement has kept pace with reality. The movement continues to grow, and so does Greenpeace.
From its humble roots in Vancouver, Greenpeace now has offices in more than 40 countries on every continent and three million members worldwide. We started with the hope of ending nuclear testing (green) and proliferation (peace) - a campaign we're still fighting, primarily in the energy sector - and we're still promoting practical solutions for the planet.
We're an organization of big ideas and ideals. We don't accept government or corporation money. And we're always ready and willing to stand up for our convictions and tackle big problems with big solutions.

Over the last 40 years, Greenpeace has helped to end nuclear testing, introduce a ban on the dumping of radioactive waste at sea, protect the ozone layer by introducing technology like "Greenfreeze" refrigeration, establish a treaty to protect the Antarctic from mineral exploration and put an end to commercial whale hunting.
We are renown for our famous, high profile demonstrations. But, most of our work is focused on promoting real-life, practical solutions for people and the environment.
And we're making it a global effort, in every sense of the word. We employ scientists, lawyers, engineers and researchers. We have the most dedicated activists and volunteers on the planet - and they are young, old, and everything in between.
Not bad for an organization that began with a daring mission to end nuclear testing on Amchitka, Alaska. Fittingly, Greenpeace doesn't celebrate its birthday on the occasion of a meeting, the writing of a charter or the raising of its first funds. We celebrate the day a group of visionaries set sail to make a difference, and as Bill Darnell quipped, to make a "green peace."
This week, we'll pause to celebrate our successes and then get back to the meaningful change Greenpeace has always stood for, and which is more urgently needed now more than ever before.

© 2011 Vancouver Sun

.Expanding Deserts, Falling Water Tables and Toxins Driving People from Homesby Lester Brown / Inter Press Service

Published on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 by Inter Press Service

Expanding Deserts, Falling Water Tables and Toxins Driving People from Homes

by Lester Brown

WASHINGTON - People do not normally leave their homes, their families, and their communities unless they have no other option. Yet as environmental stresses mount, we can expect to see a growing number of environmental refugees. Rising seas and increasingly devastating storms grab headlines, but expanding deserts, falling water tables, and toxic waste and radiation are also forcing people from their homes.
Advancing deserts are now on the move almost everywhere. The Sahara desert, for example, is expanding in every direction. As it advances northward, it is squeezing the populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria against the Mediterranean coast.
Advancing deserts are now on the move almost everywhere. The Sahara desert, for example, is expanding in every direction. (photo: John Spooner)
The Sahelian region of Africa - the vast swath of savannah that separates the southern Sahara desert from the tropical rainforests of central Africa - is shrinking as the desert moves southward. As the desert invades Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, from the north, farmers and herders are forced southward, squeezed into a shrinking area of productive land.
A 2006 U.N. conference on desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe.
In Iran, villages abandoned because of spreading deserts or a lack of water number in the thousands. In Brazil, some 250,000 square miles of land are affected by desertification, much of it concentrated in the country's northeast.
In Mexico, many of the migrants who leave rural communities in arid and semiarid regions of the country each year are doing so because of desertification. Some of these environmental refugees end up in Mexican cities, others cross the northern border into the United States. U.S. analysts estimate that Mexico is forced to abandon 400 square miles of farmland to desertification each year.
In China, desert expansion has accelerated in each successive decade since 1950. Desert scholar Wang Tao reports that over the last half-century or so some 24,000 villages in northern and western China have been abandoned either entirely or partly because of desert expansion.
China is heading for a ‘Dust Bowl’ like the one that forced more than 2 million "Okies" to leave their land in the U.S. in the 1930s. But the dust bowl forming in China is much larger and so is the population: China’s migration may measure in the tens of millions. And as a U.S. embassy report entitled ‘Grapes of Wrath in Inner Mongolia’ noted, "unfortunately, China's twenty-first century ‘Okies’ have no California to escape to - at least not in China."
With the vast majority of the 2.3 billion people projected to be added to the world by 2050 being born in countries where water tables are falling, water refugees are likely to become commonplace. They will be most common in arid and semiarid regions where populations are outgrowing the water supply and sinking into hydrological poverty.
Villages in northwestern India are being abandoned as aquifers are depleted and people can no longer find water. Millions of villagers in northern and western China and in northern Mexico may have to move because of a lack of water.
Thus far the evacuations resulting from water shortages have been confined to villages, but eventually whole cities might have to be relocated, such as Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, and Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
Sana’a, a fast-growing city of more than 2 million people, is literally running out of water. Quetta, originally designed for 50,000 people, now has a population exceeding 1 million - all of whom depend on 2,000 wells pumping water from what is believed to be a fossil aquifer. In the words of one study assessing its water prospect, Quetta will soon be "a dead city".
Two other semiarid Middle Eastern countries that are suffering from water shortages are Syria and Iraq. Both are beginning to reap the consequences of over-pumping their aquifers - namely irrigation wells going dry. In Syria, these trends have forced the abandonment of 160 villages. And a U.N. report estimates that more than 100,000 people in northern Iraq have been uprooted because of water shortages.
A final category of environmental refugee has appeared only in the last 50 years or so: people who are trying to escape toxic waste or dangerous radiation levels.
During the late 1970s, Love Canal - a small town in upstate New York, part of which was built on top of a toxic waste disposal site - made national and international headlines. Beginning in August 1978, families were relocated at government expense and reimbursed for their homes at market prices. By October 1980, a total of 950 families had been permanently relocated. A few years later, the federal government arranged for the permanent evacuation and relocation of all 2,000 residents of Times Beach, Missouri, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered dioxin levels well above the public health standards.
While the U.S. has relocated two communities because of health-damaging pollutants, the identification of more than 450 "cancer villages" in China suggests the need to evacuate hundreds of communities. China’s Ministry of Health statistics show that cancer is now the country’s leading cause of death, and with little pollution control, whole communities near chemical factories are suffering from unprecedented rates of cancer. Young people are leaving for the city in droves, for jobs and possibly for better health. Yet many others are too sick or too poor to leave.
Another infamous source of environmental refugees is the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Kiev, which exploded in April 1986. This started a powerful fire that lasted for 10 days. Massive amounts of radioactive material were spewed into the atmosphere, showering communities in the region with heavy doses of radiation. As a result, the residents of the nearby town of Pripyat and several other communities in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were evacuated - requiring the resettlement of 350,400 people.
In 1992, six years after the accident, Belarus was devoting 20 percent of its national budget to resettlement and the many other costs associated with the accident.
When a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March 2011, the ensuing nuclear crisis at the badly damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant forced tens of thousands of people from their homes. Whether they will be able to return or will become permanently displaced is a question that remains unanswered.
Separating out the geneses of today’s refugees is not always easy. Often the environmental and economic stresses that drive migration are closely intertwined. But whatever the reason for leaving home, people are taking increasingly desperate measures. Some of their stories are heartrending beyond belief.
As a general matter, environmental refugees are migrating from poor countries to rich ones, from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to North America and Europe. Some of the largest flows will be across national borders and they are likely to be illegal. The potentially massive movement of people across national boundaries is already affecting some countries. The U.S. is erecting a fence along the border with Mexico. The Mediterranean Sea is now routinely patrolled by naval vessels trying to intercept the small boats of African migrants bound for Europe. India, with a steady stream of migrants from Bangladesh and the prospect of millions more to come, is building a 10-foot-high fence along their shared border.
Maybe it is time for governments to consider whether it might not be cheaper and far less painful in human terms to treat the causes of migration rather than merely respond to it. This means working with developing countries to restore their economy’s natural support systems - the soils, the water tables, the grasslands, the forests - and it means accelerating the shift to smaller families to help people break out of poverty.
Treating symptoms instead of causes is not good medicine. Nor is it good public policy.

Copyright © 2011 IPS-Inter Press Service

Foreshadowing of Another Oilpocalypse? Shell's Arctic Drilling Plans Move Forward / CommonDreams

Published on Friday, January 13, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

Foreshadowing of Another Oilpocalypse? Shell's Arctic Drilling Plans Move Forward

-CommonDreams staff

Shell's plans for drilling in the ecologically sensitive areas in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas are one step closer to becoming reality.
Photograph: Subhankar Banerjee/AP As The Hill reports:

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell is a step closer to drilling in fragile waters off Alaska’s northern coast following an EPA appeals board’s Thursday denial of green group challenges to a pair of air pollution permits.

The agency’s independent Environmental Appeals Board denied review of Clean Air Act permits that EPA granted Shell for its controversial plans to drill in the ecologically fragile Beaufort and Chukchi Seas this summer.

The Houston Chronicle reports:

Shell received conditional federal approval last month to drill six exploratory wells in the Arctic offshore region but still must secure permits for individual wells.

Environmental groups are planning their next steps. The Associated Press reports:

Earthjustice attorney Colin O'Brien, who represented groups that filed one of four air permit appeals, said it an email response to questions that the decision could be appealed in federal court, but that it was too early to speculate about potential next steps.

He said EPA took shortcuts when it issued the permits and failed to fully protect Arctic air quality as required by the Clean Air Act.

"These permits pave the way for Shell to emit thousands of tons of harmful air pollution into the pristine Arctic environment, at levels that may be harmful to nearby communities and the environment for years to come," he said. "We are disappointed that the Environmental Appeals Board decided against us and allowed EPA's permit decisions to stand.

In October green groups appealed the EPA's decision to grant Shell Clean Air Act permits to shell.

“These permits mark the start of full-scale industrial oil exploitation of the extremely sensitive Arctic. Oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean comes with unacceptable risks of spills that could have catastrophic impacts on Arctic wildlife and the communities that rely on the Arctic environment,” said Center for Biological Diversity attorney Vera Pardee. “We witnessed devastating damage from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill; the turbulent, icy, dark and remote conditions of the Arctic would make cleanup there even harder — next to impossible. Drilling in Arctic waters is an extremely bad idea.”