tagged w/ Greenpeace
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Barbie has a nasty deforestation habit - she is trashing rainforests in Indonesia, including areas that are home to some of the last tiger, orang-utans and elephants, just so she can wrap herself in pretty packaging.
Mattel, the manufacturer of Barbie, is feeding this nasty habit by using paper packaging for the world's most famous toy from Indonesia's most notorious rainforest destroyer Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).
Critical wildlife habitat and carbon-rich rainforests and peatlands are being wrecked for cheap, throw-away toy packaging.
Creating the future of play, shouldn't mean no future for rainforests.
Tell Mattel to stop destroying rainforests for toy packaging.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/the-breakupBarbie has a nasty deforestation habit - she is trashing rainforests in Indonesia,... more
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An Arctic oil rig was forced to stop drilling by environmental activists demanding to know how its owner would respond to an oil leak on the scale of last year's Deepwater Horizon spill.
Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy said drilling was suspended at its Leiv Eiriksson rig off the coast of Greenland after 18 Greenpeace protesters breached a restricted area. The activists launched from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza in five inflatable speedboats from outside a 500m exclusion zone set up by Danish authorities.
Campaigner Ben Ayliffe said: "Cairn Energy is hiding its oil spill response plan, so we're going to the one place where there must be a copy of it. It's obvious why Cairn won't tell the world how it would clean up a BP-style oil spill here in the Arctic, and that's because it can't be done.
"Experts say the freezing temperatures and remote location mean a deep water blow-out in this stunning pristine environment would be an irreversible disaster. If they published the plan, the dangers of investing in such a high-risk venture would be laid bare. We have to draw a line in the ice and stop the Arctic oil rush."
Cairn announced this week that it had begun drilling in two wells in the region. The two wells are approximately 160km and 300km off Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Each drilling operation is in water deeper than 900m.
Last week, two Greenpeace protesters occupied the company's 53,000-tonne drilling vessel.They hung from the underside of the rig in an Arctic survival pod and had enough supplies to keep them there for 10 days, but were removed by Danish police.
Cairn has asked a court in the Netherlands to legally prevent Greenpeace from disrupting any future deep-sea drilling operations.
In a statement, the company said: "Cairn confirms that members of Greenpeace have boarded the semi-submersible drilling vessel, the Leiv Eiriksson, owned by Ocean Rig. The protesters have breached the safety exclusion zone and entered a restricted area on the rig. In accordance with the strict health and safety practices employed in this drilling programme and in order to ensure safe operating conditions, drilling has been suspended.
"Cairn respects the rights of individuals and organisations to express their views in a safe and peaceful manner, but would be concerned with any action that presents a risk to the safety of people and/or equipment."
The company added: "Wherever it is active, Cairn operates in a safe and prudent manner. The Greenland Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum has established some of the most stringent operating regulations anywhere globally, which mirror those applied in the Norwegian North Sea. Cairn takes its responsibilities such as oil spill contingency and response plans very seriously.
"Cairn, working closely with the Greenland authorities, has developed an extensive emergency response and oil spill response plan. As stipulated by Greenland Authorities, the oil spill response documents are not publicly available."An Arctic oil rig was forced to stop drilling by environmental activists demanding to... more
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The Independent and other British newspapers cited WikiLeaks cables that “quotes the head of the Russian navy saying that ‘one cannot exclude that in the future there will be a redistribution of power, up to armed intervention.’The Independent and other British newspapers cited WikiLeaks cables that “quotes... more
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U.S. Nuclear Regulator Lets Industry Help With the Fine Print
by John Sullivan, Special to ProPublica April 13, 2011, 8:05 p.m.
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Photo: Ohio’s Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station (US NRC)
In the fall of 2001, inspectors with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were so concerned about possible corrosion at Ohio’s Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station that they prepared an emergency order to shut it down for inspection. But, according to a report from the NRC inspector general, senior officials at the agency held off – in part because they did not want to hurt the plant’s bottom line.
When workers finally checked the reactor in February of 2002, they made an astonishing finding: Corrosive fluid from overhead pipes had eaten a football-sized hole in the reactor vessel’s steel side. The only thing preventing a leak of radioactive coolant was a pencil-thin layer of stainless steel.
The Davis Besse incident has resurfaced in the wake of the ongoing nuclear crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant. Stories recounting close ties between Japanese nuclear regulators and utilities there have reinvigorated critics who say the NRC has not been an aggressive enough U.S. watchdog.
The NRC says that is not the case, and commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko defended the agency’s independence and professionalism. “I have a great staff who are dedicated to public health and safety, and people who interact with this agency, they know that and they see that,” he said in an interview.
Critics of the NRC say the problem at Davis Besse, 20 miles southeast of Toledo, is a prime example of the agency’s deference to industry. The inspector general concluded that a conflict between the NRC’s twin goals of inspecting the plant to protect public safety and a desire to “reduce unnecessary regulatory burden” on the owner led to the delay in finding the gaping hole.
In 2003, then NRC’s Chairman Richard Meserve disputed the inspector general’s report, which found that the agency’s decision on Davis Besse “was driven in large part by a desire to lessen the financial impact” on the plant’s owner. Meserve said the NRC had adequate technical grounds for the delay.
The agency insists that it vigilantly watches operations at 104 commercial reactors and frequently issues violations to nuclear companies that step out of line. Since 2001, the agency has averaged about 120 significant enforcement actions a year at power plants and other nuclear facilities it oversees.
While the Davis Besse case focuses on singular allegations of influence, critics say the industry routinely exercises its muscle in a more pervasive way: through contributions to NRC regulatory guides that advise nuclear companies about how to best follow the agency’s rules.
Large parts of the guides, issued by NRC, incorporate or endorse material written by the industry’s trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute. The guides – containing detailed technical procedures and reference materials – are a key part of NRC’s oversight. They provide the nuts and bolts advice that nuclear operators follow to stay in compliance but often refer to even more detailed industry guides.
The NRC’s guide on fatigue, for example, details how many hours employees in key jobs can work, how to respond when a worker is too tired, and how many days off employees in certain jobs need. It officially incorporates, with a few exceptions, another 60-page guide compiled by the industry group.
In an e-mail, Thomas Kauffman, a spokesman for NEI, passed along responses to ProPublica’s questions from the trade group’s director of engineering, John Butler. “NRC endorsement, with or without exceptions, of industry guidance is a common practice,” Butler said.
Some examples from a list the trade group provided to ProPublica:
How to apply for an operating license extension. Many aging plants are seeking to extend their original 40-year licenses. The 10-page NRC document endorses a 245-page NEI guide that tells applicants how to identify critical equipment and inspect it to be sure it meets relicensing standards.
How to protect plants from fires. The NRC’s regulatory guide cites an NEI document that “provides the majority of the guidance applicable” for analyzing fire risk at plants, with some specific exceptions.
How to upgrade plant control rooms. The NRC regulatory guide says that “when possible, this guide has incorporated (NEI’s) ‘Control Room Habitability Guide,’ ” again with some limits.
The NEI said its role in contributing to NRC’s guides does not mean the nuclear industry has too much influence. Kauffman said the NRC has final say on what NEI adds and frequently makes changes.
“They review them completely,” Kauffman said. “It is one thing to draft something and put it out there; it is quite another for the NRC to decide to accept it.”
NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner said in an e-mail that the NEI is not the sole source of information in agency regulatory guides and that NRC accepts comment from a broad array of sources.
“If any stakeholder – company, industry organization, individual or public group – backs up a request with appropriate information, the NRC will consider it,” Brenner said. “The NRC regularly denies industry requests that lack proper support, and we’ve taken properly supported rulemaking requests from non-industry sources on many occasions.”
“The NRC is the final arbiter of what becomes a regulation,” he said, “with safety the total focus of our effort.”
But others said the reliance on the industry creates a potential conflict of interest.
Jim Riccio, who follows nuclear issues for Greenpeace, said that allowing the NEI to play such a large role means the industry can shape much of what nuclear companies are required to do.
Riccio said NRC’s precursor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, was disbanded after Congress concluded it had become too concerned with promoting nuclear power instead of regulating safety.
In a 1974 overhaul, development of nuclear energy was transferred elsewhere and protection of the public was given to the NRC, a five-member body whose members are appointed by the president.
Riccio asserted that over the years, NRC has become more accommodating to the industry.
“The problem with inviting the industry in is that they tend to dominate the process,” he said. “The NRC has a problem distinguishing between the public they serve and the industry they regulate. “U.S. Nuclear Regulator Lets Industry Help With the Fine Print
by John Sullivan,... more
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PART ONE..........
Nuclear threat level raised
Crisis rates in most severe category
Japan nuclear agency raises threat level
By Matt Smith, CNN
April 11, 2011 11:11 p.m. EDT
Click on picture to play Video
Anatomy of a ghost town
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: The agency raises the level from 5 to 7
7 is the highest possible level and is on par with Chernobyl
Japan's government has called for further evacuations
Cities covered by Monday's orders should evacuate in about a month, Edano says
Tokyo (CNN) -- Japanese authorities Tuesday "provisionally" declared the country's nuclear accident a level-7 event on the international scale for nuclear disasters -- the highest level -- putting it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announced the new level Tuesday morning. It had previously been at 5.
Regulators have determined the amount of radioactive iodine released by the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was at least 15 times the volume needed to reach the top of the International Nuclear Event Scale, the agency said. That figure is still about 10 percent of the amount released at Chernobyl, they said.
The amount of radioactive Cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, is about one-seventh the amount released at Chernobyl, according to the agency.
Japan's nuclear concerns explained
Hidehiko Nishiyama, the safety agency's chief spokesman, explained the final level won't be set until the disaster is over and a more detailed investigation has been conducted.
Tetsunari Iida, a former nuclear engineer-turned-industry critic, told CNN the declaration has no immediate practical impact on the crisis. It is a sign, however, that Japanese regulators have rethought their earlier assessments of the disaster, said Iida, who now runs an alternative energy think-tank in Tokyo.
According to the scale, a level 5 equates to the likelihood of a release of radioactive material, several deaths from radiation and severe damage to a reactor core.
The 1979 incident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island was a 5. The partial meltdown of a reactor core there was deemed the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
The Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union rated a 7 on the scale, which equates to a "major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."
Japan's government called for evacuations Monday from several towns beyond the danger zone already declared around Fukushima Daiichi, warning that residents could receive high doses of radiation over the coming months.
Japan to evacuate more towns
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the municipalities are likely to see long-term radiation levels that exceed international safety standards, and he warned that the month-old crisis at Fukushima Daiichi is not yet over.
"Things are relatively more stable, and things are stabilizing," he said. "However, we need to be ready for the possibility that things may turn for the worse."
And about an hour after he spoke, a fresh earthquake rattled the country, forcing workers to evacuate the plant and knocking out power to the three damaged reactors for about 40 minutes, the plant's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, reported. The magnitude 6.6 tremor came a month to the day after the magnitude 9 quake and tsunami that knocked out the plant's cooling systems, and followed a magnitude 7.1 aftershock Thursday night.
Neither the 6.6 quake nor any of the smaller ones that rippled across the region in its wake inflicted any more damage to the plant, Tokyo Electric officials told reporters.
At least six killed in latest Japan quake
Tuesday morning, a fire broke out in a battery storage building in a water discharge area of reactors 1-4 at Fukushima Daiichi, Tokyo Electric said. The fire was out a few hours later and the company said it caused no radiation emissions and no effect on cooling systems.
Japan's government said it did not know how many people would be displaced by the new evacuation orders. Evacuation orders have so far covered about 85,000 people inside the 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) zone, while another 62,000 within 30 kilometers have been told to stay inside, Fukushima prefecture officials told CNN.
The decision announced Monday does not create a wider radius around the plant, said Masanori Shinano, an official with Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission.
Instead, "if there are areas in the northwestern parts where there is a risk of exceeding 20 millisieverts as a cumulative dose over a one-year period, the area will be designated an evacuation area even if it is beyond the 30-kilometer area," Shinano told reporters Monday night.
That dose is a tiny fraction of what would cause immediate radiation sickness, but it's more than seven times the amount a typical resident of a western industrialized country receives from background sources in a year. Long-term exposures to those levels of radiation could increase the risk of cancer -- and the presence of cesium isotopes that have half-lives of up to 30 years means that radioactivity could linger for some time.
CONTINUED.......PART ONE..........
Nuclear threat level raised
Crisis rates in most severe... more
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A new analysis prepared for Greenpeace Germany by nuclear safety expert Dr Helmut Hirsch shows that by March 23 2011, Japan’s nuclear crisis has already released enough radioactivity to be ranked at Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES). This is the scale’s highest level, and equal to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Hirsch’s assessment, based on data published by the French government's radiation protection agency (IRSN) and the Austrian governments Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) found that the total amount of radionuclides iodine-131 and caesium-137 released between March 11 and March 23 have been so high that the Fukushima crisis already equates to three INES 7 incidents.A new analysis prepared for Greenpeace Germany by nuclear safety expert Dr Helmut... more
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The Toronto Star...
Photo: Greenpeace protestors, from left, Brooke Forbes, Laura Severinac and Thomas Rohner, are handcuffed by Durham Region Police at the Hope Fellowship Church in Courtice after they disrupted hearings into nuclear safety. (March 22, 2011)
For the Toronto Star/Yvonne Berg
Police move on Greenpeace activists blocking Darlington nuclear hearings
John Spears Business Reporter
Durham Regional Police removed four Greenpeace protesters from a hearing into nuclear safety and environment issues Tuesday at around 1:30 p.m. after they had chained themselves to a table in the hearing room.
Police made their move at around 1 p.m. but had trouble removing the locks and chains the protesters had secured around their waists.
After a half-hour struggle, they managed to remove the chain from the table, and took the four off with the chains still around their waists.
Protesters had been handcuffed as well, and were told they would be charged with mischief.
Ontario Power Generation, or OPG, wants to build new reactors at the Darlington site.
Greenpeace spokesman Shawn-Patrick Stensil said the protest had drawn attention to what the group considers to be inadequacies in the hearings.
“We don’t want these hearings to be used as a promotion for OPG’s project,” said Stensil.
“This process shouldn’t be used to legitimate that project.”
Environmentalists had asked the panel on Monday to adjourn the hearings until more information is gathered about the Japanese nuclear disaster, but the panel refused.
"They won't look at a Fukushima-scale accident," Stensil said of the panel.
He noted that China and Switzerland have suspended their nuclear processes.
The demonstrations began at around 9 a.m. by nine protesters, four of whom chained themselves to the table at the front of the room in a church in Courtice where the hearings were scheduled. The other five agreed to move to the back of the room.
Although the protest wasn’t physically preventing the hearings from proceeding, Chairman Alan Graham called an adjournment when he asked them to move and they quietly refused.
By around noon, a hearing official formally requested police to clear the hall of anyone disrupting the hearings.
Police then gave the protesters one more chance, asking them to leave voluntarily, but all refused.
That’s when the police took action.
The protesters had previously been warned that they would be arrested and charged with mischief if they didn't leave but they held their ground.
“We're continuing to disrupt the hearings that are happening today that we feel are unjust, especially given the situation that's happening in Japan,” Laura Severinac, one of the four, said earlier.
“We feel that nuclear energy is dirty, dangerous and expensive and we want these hearings suspended.”
“We're not prepared to leave until they stop the hearing,” said Alex Speers-Roesch, another one of the four.The Toronto Star...
Photo: Greenpeace protestors, from left, Brooke Forbes, Laura... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
The natural gas industry is afraid that Josh Fox, director of the muckraking film Gasland, might win an Oscar on Sunday. Earlier this month, an organization called Energy in Depth, backed by the oil and gas industry, sent the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a letter in which it argued that Gasland, Fox’s exposé on the natural gas industry, should be removed from consideration for best documentary feature because it contained inaccurate information.
After dealing with the industry for the past couple of years, Fox is not surprised by this tactic. “What this points to is the culture of that industry, which is bullying, which is aggressive, which is outlandish in their tactics, which will stop at nothing,” he told AlterNet.
The film is still up for consideration, and the industry should be worried about the impact its nomination, let alone a victory, could have. Even if the film doesn’t win on Sunday, millions of viewers will see a clip of the film that documents the real threat of environmental devastation that comes along with natural gas drilling and, in particular, with hydrofracking.
Nothing natural about it
The Media Consortium’s Weekly Mulch has been tracking the fight over natural gas drilling. As noted back in September, Sandra Steingraber, in Orion Magazine, has called the rise of hydrofracking “the environmental issue of our time.” In a more recent dispatch for the magazine, Steingraber reports from an Environmental Protection Agency hearing on fracking, a technique for extracting otherwise hard-to-reach gas from the ground.
In upstate New York, where the hearing was held and where natural gas companies have been buying up drilling rights and properties for the past couple of years, residents are hugely concerned about this issue: four hundred people signed up to speak, for 120 seconds each, as Steingraber reports, over two days. One speaker in particular stuck out to her, though:
An older man rose to speak….And then he let ten seconds of silence fill the theater….After hours of ceaseless, rapid-fire speech, the sudden hush flowed through the overheated room like cool water. Someone giggled nervously. And then, finally, he spoke. That silence, he announced, represented the sounds of migratory birds. And tourists. And professors. And organic farmers. And thus with no words at all he reminded the audience of all the good members of our beloved community who would — if our land filled up with drill rigs, waste ponds, compressor stations, and diesel trucks — disappear, exit the cycle. As in, forever.
At Change.org, Austin Billings has another account of what natural gas drilling is putting at risk—the Bridger-Teton National Forest, miles of “spectacular hills and tall pine forests” that, Billings writes, “just kept going” as he drove through them. A company called Plains Exploration and Production Company is working to sink more than 130 natural gas wells in this area, Billings reports, a project that will strew the area with “pipelines, compressor stations, industrial water wells, truck staging areas, and other industrial features.”
Push Back
If Josh Fox wins an Oscar, however, natural gas projects like this one will face even more opposition. And that opposition matters. Just ask Costco, which caved in this week to a Greenpeace-led campaign against its sales of unsustainable seafood. For months, Greenpeace and its allies have been pushing the chain of wholesale grocery stores to sell only fish that can be captured or farmed in a sustainable way. The chain agreed to remove 12 “red list” species, at the highest risk for extinction, and to take other actions to promote sustainability and ocean conservation.
“It was a long and arduous process,” said Casson Trenor, Greenpeace’s seafood campaigner, said, according to Change.org’s Sarah Parsons. “I’m really happy with where we’ve gotten to, and I think it says a lot about our methods and how effective we can be.”
Guilty pleasures
Of course, fish is not the only food that’s damaging to the environment. So much of what’s available to eat is damaging to the environment. Grist reported last week that Girl Scout cookies are made with palm oil, the production of which is driving deforestation in Indonesia. Earth Island Journal’s Maureen Nandini Mitra follows up by pointing out that Thin Mints aren’t the only sweet that sucks up palm oil: her list includes M&Ms, Snickers, and Twix, as well as Clif energy bars.
Another point against those treats: They usually don’t come in recyclable packaging. On the other hand, it’s a little bit of a mystery what happens to the recyclable containers tossed into the recycling, especially those with a little food gunk left on them. For those worried about their fate, Mother Jones’ Kiera Butler has done a substantial public service by ferreting the best approaching to cleaning out recyclables. The takeaway: They can be a little bit dirty. ”It’s not a giant deal if containers have little food residue on them,” Butler reports, but “the cleaner your containers, the more they’re worth on the recyclables market.”
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outletsby Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
The natural gas industry is afraid that... more
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BREAKING! This morning Greenpeace activists have scaled the Bridgeport Harbor Generating Station coal elevator and unfurled a huge banner reading "Shut it Down: Quit Coal." The coal plant is an aging, inefficient plant that endangers the health of Bridgeport residents, including the children attending the six schools located within a one mile radius of the plant.BREAKING! This morning Greenpeace activists have scaled the Bridgeport Harbor... more
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HUGE VICTORY FOR ECUADOREAN PEOPLE AGAINST CHEVRON OIL...
QUITO | Mon Feb 14, 2011 2:20pm EST
Feb 14 (Reuters) - An Ecuadorean lawyer for the plaintiffs said on Monday that a court in the Amazon city of Lago Agrio had ordered U.S. oil giant Chevron (CVX.N) to pay more than $8 billion in environmental damages.
Plaintiffs had originally asked for $27 billion. (Reporting by Quito Newsroom)
================================================
~ CHEVRON IN AN ATTEMPT TO STALL...
continues to drag their feet with Yet more legal maneuvering~
~ Gerard Ange'
>>> BEGIN CHEVRON STORY:
Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. oil company, faces at least $8.2 billion in damages after losing an Ecuadorean lawsuit that alleged the company is responsible for chemical-laden wastewater dumped in the Amazon River basin more than 20 years ago.
The decision arises from an 18-year-old lawsuit by Ecuadoreans that sparked accusations of corruption and deception by the company and lawyers for the plaintiffs. Chevron won a Feb. 8 court order in New York barring the Ecuadoreans from attempting to enforce the judgment in the U.S. or elsewhere. Chevron has no assets in Ecuador.
The ruling requires Chevron to pay $8.2 billion to $9 billion in damages, Karen Hinton, a spokeswoman for the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said in a telephone interview today. Kent Robertson, a spokesman for San Ramon, California-based Chevron, said in an e-mail he didn’t know what the damage amount was.
“The case really sends a message that companies operating in the undeveloped world cannot rely on a compliant government or lax environmental rules as a way of permanently insulating themselves from liability,” said Robert Percival, a law professor and director of the environmental law program at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore.
The lawsuit seeks to hold Chevron responsible for water and soil contamination that allegedly caused Amazon residents $27 billion in damages from illness, deaths and economic loss. Texaco, acquired by Chevron in 2001, allegedly dumped chemical- laden oil drilling waste in hundreds of small ponds dug from 1964 to about 1992, according to the plaintiffs.
PetroEcuador
Chevron said it cleaned up its portion of the oil fields and was released from pollution claims in an agreement with Ecuador and PetroEcuador, the state-owned oil company that took over the Texaco operations in 1992.
“The Ecuadorean court’s judgment is illegitimate and unenforceable,” the company said in a statement today. “It is the product of fraud and is contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence. Chevron will appeal this decision in Ecuador and intends to see that justice prevails.”
Chevron rose $1.22, or 1.3 percent, to $96.95 at 4 p.m. in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange, its biggest gain in two weeks.
Second-Largest Damages
The judgment would rank second in environmental damage cases behind the $20 billion Gulf Coast Claims Facility, a settlement fund set up for BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, said Percival.
“Today’s judgment affirms what the plaintiffs have contended for the past 18 years about Chevron’s intentional and unlawful contamination of Ecuador’s rainforest,” Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorean plaintiffs’ attorney, said in an e-mailed statement.
The lawsuit, brought on behalf of 30,000 residents of Ecuador’s Amazon, was first filed in federal court in New York in 1993. After Chevron argued that the case should be heard where the alleged contamination occurred, the case was refiled in Ecuador in 2003.
Chevron has accused the Ecuadorean government of unfairly influencing the court proceedings and alleged that a $27 billion damage assessment provided by a court-appointed expert was ghostwritten by consultants and lawyers hired by the plaintiffs.
The company won U.S. court orders last year that forced attorneys and consultants for the Ecuadoreans to answer questions under oath about the case and gave Chevron access to outtakes of a documentary film about the lawsuit.
Racketeering Lawsuit
Chevron in February filed a racketeering lawsuit against the lawyers and the plaintiffs in federal court in Manhattan for “leading a fraudulent litigation and PR campaign against the company.” The company filed a claim in 2009 against Ecuador in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague seeking orders that it has no liability for the environmental pollution and PetroEcuador should pay the damage award.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs have said there’s evidence of contamination at all 45 former well and oil production sites inspected during the case. Chevron engaged in a campaign to discredit them, entrap an Ecuadorean judge that presided over the case and set up dummy corporations in Ecuador to hide the company’s role in testing soil samples from the pollution sites, the lawyers have said.
The case is Maria Aquinda v Chevron, 002-2003, Superior Court of Nueva Loja, Lago Agrio, Ecuador.
To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Carroll in Chicago at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net; Karen Gullo in San Francisco at kgullo@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Susan Warren at susanwarren@bloomberg.net; David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net
GO TO STORY:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-14/chevron-to-appeal-adverse-judgment-in-ecuador-pollution-case.htmlHUGE VICTORY FOR ECUADOREAN PEOPLE AGAINST CHEVRON OIL...
QUITO | Mon Feb 14, 2011... more
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"A Greenpeace report has called on the Chinese textile industry to clean up its processes after finding high levels of pollution in the southern industrial towns of Xintang – the "jeans capital of the world" – and Gurao, a manufacturing town 80% of whose economy is devoted to bras, underwear, and other clothing articles."
Look at the horrifying pictures.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2011/feb/09/pollution-china-manufacturing-towns#/?picture=371500654&index=0"A Greenpeace report has called on the Chinese textile industry to clean up its... more
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Will Facebook announce a major clean energy switch on or before Earth Day, April 22?
Now that would really be something positive for the super-fast growing social network to offer the world for Earth Day.
GreenBiz is reporting that Greenpeace is stepping up its long-running campaign to attempt to get Facebook, the world’s largest online social network, to do exactly that.Will Facebook announce a major clean energy switch on or before Earth Day, April 22?... more
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