ecology

A Personal Review of Pages 240-241 in Christian Parenti's Tropic of Chaos on February 1st, 2012, high of 62 degrees, Philadelphia, PA.

Hydraulic fracturing (often called fracking) is a form of drilling for natural gas that releases dangerous chemicals and radioactive toxic waste. Gas companies throughout Pennsylvania have been dumping this waste into our rivers and streams – our drinking water! There is currently a loophole that allows gas companies to drill without obeying the Clean Water Act, and they are not required to research the effects of their drilling or clean up the waste they cause.

The Delaware River Basin Commission is currently considering a draft that will allow for more unregulated fracking in the Marcellus Shale—a gas-rich rock formation which is also known to contain radioactive substances. These plans don’t address health and safety regulations to keep radioactive, carcinogenic chemicals out of the water that Philadelphia, New York, and all cities and towns downstream rely on for clean drinking water. Reports are already coming in from across Pennsylvania of wells being poisoned by toxic chemicals as a result of fracking. On March 8th, hundreds of people gave testimony before Philadelphia’s City Council in opposition to this draft – several were mothers who worried for their children’s health, some were scientists who argued for the need for safety measures and regulation prior to considering future drilling.

Photo by Andalusia Knoll

For the past two weeks in Cancun, Mexico parallel conferences on climate change have taken place. One gathered behind closed doors and police barricades in a luxury beach side resort. The others met in downtown Cancun bringing together members of civil society, indigenous communities, environmental groups and campesinos from all over the world in encampments of shared food, housing and informational forums.

For the past two weeks I've been helping organize a volunteer camp in small town Chile. It's simply called the Trabajo Voluntario (Volunteer Work) or TraVol, and was co-organized by the Free University of Santiago. If you read Spanish, there's more info at: http://travol-polpaiko-2011.blogspot.com/

The camp is taking place in Polpaico, a a small, relatively poor town in the northern part of the Santiago Metropolitan Region (there are 13 regions in Chile, kind of like states but less autonomous from the federal government). It's not really a city, but it's also not isolated, as hundreds of vehicles pass everyday.

Now it’s official: according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst in American history.   

Since April 20th, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing eleven workers, thousands of barrels of oil have been continuously spewing into the Gulf waters. The exact numbers have been in dispute since the incident occurred, but it now seems clear that British Petroleum has been grossly underestimating the extent of the spill. In the past six weeks, its two attempts to cap the leaking well have failed. In the meantime, the company has been pouring tens of thousands of gallons of Corexit, a toxic chemical dispersant banned in the UK, into the Gulf to break up the visible patches of oil. Workers spraying the chemical have reported nausea and vomiting, but BP has chalked up their complaints to “food poisoning” and even prohibited them from wearing masks.

Environmentalism in an era of green capitalism

By Kate Zaidan

This December, fifteen years after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, world leaders will converge in Copenhagen to renegotiate a global solution to the most pressing environmental issue of our time. Barack Obama will undoubtedly tout his efforts to bring the United States on board after decades of climate change denial and congressional cowardice, and most of the world, including mainstream environmental organizations, will likely fawn over his rhetorical and ideological prowess.

The Mill Creek Farm and Brown Street Community Garden

By Jade Walker, co-director The Mill Creek Farm, with Suzy Subways

“The [Brown Street Community Garden] has been around for 30 years (I remember when the houses caved in on that site and it was just an eyesore for many years) and it now brings much enjoyment to the community. My mother (now deceased), a country girl, had a space in the garden and planted much of the vegetables that eventually found their way to our dinner table. It brought such contentment to many of our senior citizens and lightened their food budgets. Now I am a senior citizen trying to raise my grandson who just turned 13 (my daughter is deceased) and trying to find everything imaginable to keep him occupied and out of trouble.... He spends as much time as possible with the [Mill Creek Farm] staff and he is learning about farming/gardening and he also helps set up the stand to sell the fruits of their labor.”

—Engrid R. Bullock, neighbor

Dear Friends of Mill Creek Farm,