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Archive for March 9th, 2014
Action Alert: Demand Oil Exploration End in Congo’s Gorilla Rich Virunga National Park
Posted by Water Conservation Blog on March 9th, 2014
By EcolInternet's Rainforest Portal
TAKE ACTION HERE NOW!
It has been two years since EcoInternet first alerted the international community that SOCO International a London-listed oil company planned to explore for oil in Virunga National Park. Virunga is Africas oldest national park and an UNESCO World Heritage site; and is home to a large population of wild gorillas, many other important wildlife species, primary rainforest ecosystems, and forest-dependent communities. Our earlier protests together caused other companies considering oil exploration to pull out. And opposition is growing as WWF has embraced the campaign, successfully bringing the case to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Oil exploration in these globally vital rainforest ecosystems will further set a dangerous precedent that nowhere whether protected, or ecologically important is immune from oil industry destruction. It appears every last bit of Earth's large, wild and intact ecosystems will be sacrificed to industrial development to extend our dependence upon fossil fuel, and delay transition now to renewable energy sources ensuring abrupt run-away climate change and global ecosystem collapse.
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Next fracking controversy: In Midwest, a storm brews over ‘frac sand’
Posted by Monitor: None Given on March 9th, 2014
Monitor: Kyle Slaby bounds up the slope behind his house, stopping at the sandstone outcrop he hopes will save his family's farm. The Slabys grow corn and soybeans on the ridgeline above. But these days there's more money – a lot more – in mining the sand below. "A lot of people look on it as an extension of farming," Mr. Slaby says. "It's another crop you're harvesting." Sand has become a valuable – and deeply divisive – commodity in the upper Midwest. Hydraulic fracturing, a method of extraction also...
Report: Oklahoma’s Most Powerful Earthquake Cause Determined
Posted by Weather Channel: None Given on March 9th, 2014
Weather Channel: One of Oklahoma's biggest man-made earthquakes, caused by fracking-linked wastewater injection, triggered an earthquake cascade that led to the damaging magnitude-5.7 Prague quake that struck on Nov. 6, 2011, a new study confirms.
The findings suggest that even small man-made earthquakes, such as those of just a magnitude 1 or magnitude 2, can trigger damaging quakes, said study co-author Elizabeth Cochran, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
"Even if wastewater injection only directly...
China to toughen environment law, hold polluters accountable
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2014
Reuters: China will toughen its environmental protection laws to target polluters, according to a high-level policy report released on Sunday, paving the way for possibly unlimited penalties for polluting and the suspension or shutdown of polluters.
The revised law would hold "polluters accountable for the damage they cause and having them compensate for it", said the report, delivered by Zhang Dejiang, who sits on the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee as one of the country's most powerful politicians....
United Kingdom: Like a lamb to slaughter: Environmentalist attacks ‘ecological disaster’ of sheep-rearing
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2014
Independent: Its stark beauty may have inspired romantic poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, but for environmentalist George Monbiot, the Lake District has been turned by centuries of sheep-farming into something akin to a "chemical desert".
And so the controversial environmentalist could be forgiven for feeling a bit like Daniel in the lion's den as he took his message of "rewilding" the countryside to a hostile audience of about 100 stony-faced Cumbrian hill farmers.
In his most recent book, Feral: Searching...