Tag: Environment

Right-wing intelligence cabal in UK to ‘neutralize’ environmentalist enemies

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Leaked emails expose Tory intelligence cabal scheming for Priti Patel’s authorization of MI6-style “counter-intelligence” operation against UK environmentalists. The cabal has turned on Boris Johnson and believes Patel is set to replace him.

On May 18th, The Grayzone exclusively revealed that a shadowy right-wing intelligence cabal was conducting a hostile “research and influence operation” targeting perceived Chinese agents of influence on British soil. The operation was directly inspired by MI6 “principles and methods,” and involved UK Home Secretary Priti Patel more widely in the effort.

Environmentalists and green lobbyists are now squarely in the cabal’s crosshairs, as leaked emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal. Leaders of the campaign have sought to prepare detailed dossiers on targets, including information related to their sexual relationships, in order to identify “points of weakness which can be attacked” to achieve “maximum disruptive effect.”

Home Secretary Patel remains the cabal’s main point of contact as it lobbies for official authorization for its malign efforts. What’s more, participants in the operation believe

— source thegrayzone.com | Kit Klarenberg | Jun 28, 2022

Nullius in verba

Chairman of Char Dham Committee resigns

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Environmentalist Ravi Chopra has resigned as chairman and member of the High Powered Committee (HPC) for the Char Dham Project, citing an assault on the Himalayas in an explosive letter. Chopra was offered the chairmanship of the HPC in September 2019. He wrote that “it is that same inner voice now compels me to move out. The belief that the HPC could protect this fragile ecology has been shattered. I can do no more. I therefore choose to resign.” The Char Dham Road Project proposes widening of roads up to 10 metres to improve the accessibility to the Char Dham (Four shrines): Yamunotri, Gangotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath.

— source downtoearth.org.in | 12 Feb 2022

Nullius in verba

How a powerful company convinced Georgia to let it bury toxic waste in groundwater

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For the past several years, Georgia Power has gone to great lengths to skirt the federal rule requiring coal-fired power plants to safely dispose of massive amounts of toxic waste they produced.

But previously unreported documents obtained by ProPublica show that the company’s efforts were more extensive than publicly known. Thousands of pages of internal government correspondence and corporate filings show how Georgia Power made an elaborate argument as to why it should be allowed to store waste produced before 2020 in a way that wouldn’t fully protect surrounding communities’ water supplies from contamination — and that would save the company potentially billions of dollars in cleanup costs.

In a series of closed-door meetings with state environmental regulators, the powerful utility even went so far as to challenge the definition of the word “infiltration” in relation to how groundwater can seep into disposal sites holding underground coal ash, according to documents obtained through multiple open records requests.

— source propublica.org | Max Blau | Feb 12, 2022

Nullius in verba

The devastating environmental effects of Israeli settler-colonialism in the West Bank

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Ever since its genocidal birth in 1948, Israel has used settler-colonial expansion—and the urbanization of native Palestinian lands—to devastate both the indigenous Palestinian people and the natural, non-human environment. While the intense global concern about climate change is rarely applied to Israel’s catastrophic policies and practices, the inherent and inescapable illegalities of Israeli settlements, coupled with their disastrous effects on Palestinian life and natural resources, have formed the crux of the Palestinians’ rejection thereof.

Israeli settlements embody urbanization and the immense harm it poses. First, Israeli settlements are almost entirely built on confiscated Palestinian agricultural or grazing lands and are only erected after clear-cutting and uprooting local flora, namely olive trees: a primary source of food and income for Palestinians. The olive tree is also and an integral element of Palestinian identity, dating back millennia and symbolizing peace, steadfastness, fortitude, and resilience. As of 2015, the olive sub-sector constituted 15% of Palestine’s total agricultural income, supported over 100,000 Palestinian families, and provided “3 to 4 million days of seasonal employment per year”. Not only are

— source mondoweiss.net | Zubayr Alikhan | Jan 31, 2022

Nullius in verba

Forget Malthus: upside of population growth

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Once again population growth is being discussed worldwide as a major factor behind environmental destruction. But watching Indian villages trying to survive in their degraded environment, we have an interesting question to ask: Could this be an optimum level of demographic pressure to promote community-based environmental management?

Few social scientists have tried to understand what societal responses are emerging at the grassroots to growing population and increasing pressures on natural resources. In India, for instance, population densities have nearly doubled in 40 years. This is unprecedented in India’s history. Should we assume that people are not going to respond rationally but just breed themselves to a mass societal death? Surely not.

The 1980s saw, in India, numerous micro-experiments to organise communities to manage their natural resources. Some of these experiments have had dramatic success in ecological regeneration and have led to equally dramatic improvement in the local economy.

Can we simply dismiss all this work as the result of a few dedicated social activists or is this a sign of a nascent societal response?

— source downtoearth.org.in | Anil Agarwal | 02 Jan 2022

Nullius in verba