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Obama Administration Approves Resumption of CA Offshore Fracking

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By Dan Bacher

Claiming that fracking poses “no significant impact” to the environment, Obama administration officials on May 27 finalized their plans to allow oil companies to resume offshore fracking and acidizing in California’s Santa Barbara Channel.

The announcement from the two agencies responsible for oil drilling, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Management (BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), ended a court-ordered settlement placing a moratorium on offshore fracking and acidizing for oil in the fish and wildlife-rich federal waters off California.

The two agencies reported they have completed a comprehensive environmental analysis evaluating the potential impacts from the use of “well stimulation treatments” – acidizing and fracking operations — on the 23 oil and gas platforms currently in operation on the Outer Continental Shelf offshore California.   [Read more…]

San Diegans Participate in LA Action to Break Free from Fossil Fuels

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By Nancy Cottingham / SD350

Over a two week period earlier this month, a wave of >Break Free from Fossil Fuels mass mobilizations was held around the globe. The first action saw hundreds of people peacefully shut down the UK’s largest open cast coal mine in Wales. In the Philippines, 10,000 marched demanding the cancellation of a proposed 600-Megawatt coal power plant. In Australia, 2,000 people shut down the world’s largest coal port for a day, with kayakers blocking the harbor entrance while others blocked a critical rail crossing. In Anacortes, Washington, over the course of three days, thousands converged by land and water at the site of two oil refineries. They marched, led by indigenous leaders, and held an overnight sit-in on the train tracks that led to over 50 arrests.

Closer to home, Los Angeles was the venue for a >Break Free from Fossil Fuels action for people from all over California.   [Read more…]

Big Oil Has Spent $25 Million Lobbying in 2015-16 CA Legislative Session

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Oil industry has captured California’s regulatory apparatus

By Dan Bacher / Indy Bay Media

Underneath California’s veneer as a “green leader” is a dark and oily reality — the state is the third largest petroleum producer in the nation and the oil industry is California’s largest and most powerful political lobby.

In fact, last year’s oil industry “gusher” of lobbying expenses ensured that no environmental bill opposed by Big Oil was able to make it out of the Legislature unless it was amended, as in the case of SB 350, the green energy bill. The oil lobby broke its prior spending record, spending $22 million over the past year.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Sanders Is the Hope of the Party

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By Michael-Leonard Creditor

Last Saturday, I joined more then 40 other San Diegans on a 350.org-sponsored trip to the Break Free From Fossil Fuels demonstration in Los Angeles. It was a good day of activism, but that’s not what this is about; this is just the set-up

On the way back, I realized that with this demonstration, being mirrored all over the world, climate action was taking a bold new step. It used to be, the mainstream environmental movement had the moderate goal of phasing out the use of fossil fuels as we further developed wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources. We seemed to know that we still needed some oil-based energy while those other forms are being developed.

No more. In the last few (or perhaps several) months, since the KXL pipeline was defeated, the drumbeat has grown more radical. Don’t defeat pipelines, and oil trains, and fracking separately; go right to the source.   [Read more…]

UC San Diego Faculty Call on Regents to Divest UC Funds from Fossil Fuels

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Academic Senate votes in support of divestment resolution

UC San Diego Academic Senate

UC San Diego’s Academic Senate announced the passage of a resolution calling on the UC Regents to divest the University of California’s investment portfolio of stocks in companies whose primary business concerns the extraction and sale of fossil fuels. According to its 1868 charter, governance of the University is shared between the Regents and the Academic Senate. The vote by tenure-track faculty and academic leadership took place electronically over a two week period ending May 11.

The resolution recognizes the threat of global warming and UCSD’s pioneering contribution to climate science. It also acknowledges the risk to the UC endowment and pension funds from the prospect of falling fossil fuel stocks.   [Read more…]

Direct Action Journal: Overcoming Fear

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Another episode with anxiety knocks me to my bedroom floor. Rational thought forsakes me. My body shakes with the strangled sobs of a man ashamed of his tears. Alicia bends over me. Her dark brown eyes – normally calm with the consistent rationality characterizing her personality – are wide with concern and weariness. We’re only several nights removed from the last episode. She must think, “Oh god, not again.”

Alicia seeks to hold me. I find a deep comfort in her touch – and a deep revulsion. It’s not her. The contradiction is born from the lies fear instills in me. Somewhere in the darkness, a voice reminds me that I am unlovable. I crave love but the voice whispers my lack of reasons to be loved. The closer Alicia gets to me, the closer she’ll get, I fear, to hearing those whispers, too. The closer she’ll get to realizing a man who cannot love himself should not be loved by anyone.   [Read more…]

Warning for the World: Five Pacific Islands Officially Lost to Rising Seas

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The event is the first official confirmation of what the future could be under climate change, researchers say

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

Five Pacific Islands have been swallowed by rising seas and coastal erosion, in what Australian researchers say is the first confirmation of what climate change will bring.

The submerged region, which was part of the Solomon Islands archipelago and was above water as recently as 2014, was not inhabited by humans.

However, a further six islands are also experiencing “severe shoreline recession,” which is forcing the populations in those settlements—some of which have existed since at least 1935—to flee, according to a study published last week in Environmental Research Letters.   [Read more…]

A Twofer: Carbon Tax Solves Both Climate Change and Plastic Ocean Pollution

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For more than half a century, cheaply-priced fossil fuels have come to define the American dream. We travel freely in gasoline powered vehicles and rely on coal, oil and natural gas for heating, cooling and operating electrical devices.

In addition, everything possible is now fashioned from plastic polymers derived from petroleum or natural gas. We’ve abandoned the “reuse and repair it” mindset of the pre-WWII era and embraced instead a “throw away” plastic consumer culture.

The most urgent environmental crises today are undeniably global climate change and the buildup of plastic waste in the world’s oceans. Both are harmful externalities of the fossil fuel industry: impacts, like pollution, not reflected in the cost of the products but paid for instead by some third party.

In this case, the third party is the global public that suffers the health and monetary consequences of both climate change and ocean plastic pollution.   [Read more…]

Transportation Justice for San Diego: Our Message From the Start

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By Environmental Health Coalition

A recent KPBS article reports that The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), the organization responsible for planning the transportation in San Diego County, spent close to $1.5 million on a publicity strategy for the regional transportation plan.

The plan, passed last October, put freeways before people, ignoring recurring community requests for improved transit, biking and walking infrastructure before expanding freeways.

The article exposed SANDAG’s developing media talking points to support the regional transportation plan; talking points that made the plan sound like a good option for our communities.

In reality, the plan is not a good option for our communities, and no media strategy or talking point covers this up.

Today, the truth remains the same: The regional transportation plan does not meet the community’s needs, and it is not a good plan to improve the public health, safety and sustainability of the San Diego region.   [Read more…]

Make Earth Day Every Day: How to Fight Climate Change Year Round

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By Hutton Marshall / SanDiego350

Last month’s annual Earth Day reminded people all over the globe of the importance of our planet’s health to everyday lives and to survival of future generations. Locally, thousands swarmed Balboa Park to celebrate the popular Earth Fair San Diego.

Earth Day plays a larger role than sending a powerful message about the necessity of environmental protection and sustainability. More directly, it attracts countless volunteers in San Diego and beyond to spend the holiday working toward creating a healthier planet and pushing back against forces that are rapidly changing our climate.

Unfortunately, for many volunteers, Earth Day may be the only day of the year we get out and work to combat climate change, despite widespread understanding of the need for action.   [Read more…]

Nuclear Shutdown News – April 2016: Chernobyl + 16 – It’s Far From Over

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Chernobyl + 16: It’s far from over

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

On April 26, 1986, a nuclear disaster began at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine, then ruled by the USSR. Thirty years later, that disaster is far from over.

In their 1990 book, Deadly Deceit: Low Level Fallout, High level Cover-Up, authors Jay Gould and Benjamin Goldman devote an entire chapter to the Chernobyl debacle. The doomed Chernobyl nuke was one of 4 reactors operating at the site at the time. It took until 2000 for the other 3 to be permanently shut down.
  [Read more…]

The Massive, Tragic Trashing of Our Oceans: Is There Still Time to Do Something About It?

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For sure there is sobering news about marine health. But it is not too late to change our behaviors.

By Reynard Loki / AlterNet

It’s impossible to overestimate how critical the oceans are to the overall health of life on Earth. For one thing, tiny marine plants called phytoplankton provide up to 85 percent of the world’s oxygen, according to EarthSky.org. But the oceans don’t just give us good stuff like oxygen; they take away bad stuff, like carbon dioxide. A 2011 international study led by the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, estimated that the oceans absorb 27 percent of the CO2 produced by the fossil fuel combustion.

Sadly, humans have treated the oceans abominably. Overfishing is pushing the world’s fisheries to collapse. “The global fishing fleet is 2-3 times larger than what the oceans can sustainably support,” warns the World Wide Fund for Nature. “As a result, 53 percent of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited, and 32 percent are overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion.”   [Read more…]

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