Editorial feature: Art, nukes, & ethical energy

April 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

Chilean shock artist Marco Evaristti won global notoriety in
February 2000 with an exhibit at the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding,
Denmark, consisting of 10 blenders containing live goldfish.
Visitors were invited to puree a goldfish.
Friends of Animals/Denmark, not affiliated with the U.S.
organization Friends of Animals, won an injunction ordering that the
electricity supply to the blenders should be cut off. When two
goldfish were pureed anyhow, FoA/Denmark pursued criminal charges
against Evaristti and museum director Peter Meyer. The case against
Meyer went to court in May 2003. Meyer was acquitted, but even in
Denmark, whose national identity is intertwined with commercial
fishing, whale massacres in the Faroe Islands, and the Copenhagen
fur trade, public opinion clearly rejected the notion of pulverizing
live fish as “art.”

Flood rescues in Australia, Sri Lanka, Africa driven by La Niña

March 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
Climate change has more than doubled the
risk of flooding since 1950, two new studies
agreed in the February 16, 2011 edition of
Nature.
“For years scientists have said that
global warming would likely cause extremes in
temperatures and rainfall. But this is the first
time researchers have been able to point to a
demonstrable cause-and-effect,” assessed
Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press writer
Seth Borenstein.

Maximum fine does not save ducks from oily ponds

October 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2010:
(Actual press date November 3.)
EDMONTON-Attorneys for the oil sands extraction giant
Syncrude Canada on October 22, 2010 agreed in the St. Alberta,
Alberta provincial court that Syncrude will pay the maximum
allowable penalities under both Alberta law and Canadian federal law
for causing the deaths of 1,600 ducks in an oil-saturated tailings
pond near Aurora, Alberta on April 28, 2008.
On October 25, 2010 Syncrude Canada allegedly repeated the
offense at another location.

EPA agrees to regulate factory farm emissions & effluents

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:

WASHINGTON, D.C.–Thirty-eight years after Congress told
agribusiness to clean up their act, an estimated 20,000 factory
farms may at last have to account for what they do with 500 million
tons per year of cattle, pig, and poultry effluent.
Settling a lawsuit brought in 2009 by the Natural Resources
Defense Council, Sierra Club, and the Waterkeeper Alliance, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on June 1, 2010 agreed to
identify and investigate manure discharges by factory farms.
If the EPA honors the settlement, the outcome could be the
biggest economic blow to the meat industry yet, following three
years of losses attributed to rising feed and fuel costs.

Editorial: How expanding animal agriculture swamped Pakistan

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

Is the world close to reaching finite ecological limits on
the production capacity of animal agriculture?
Flooding inundating more than a fifth of Pakistan in recent
weeks may demonstrate that the limits have already been exceeded,
doing catastrophic harm to more than 20 million displaced people and
30 million livestock, plus untold millions of dogs, cats, and
wildlife.
Critics of industrial agriculture and diets centered on
animal products have been predicting such an impending crisis for
more than 40 years. Among the most influential were Paul Ehrlich in
The Population Bomb (1968), Frances Moore Lappe in Diet for A Small
Planet (1971), and E.F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful (1973).
Their insights and dire prophecies helped to build the environmental
movement–but, focused on the collision course of human population
growth and food security, Ehrlich, Moore Lappe, and Schumacher each
hugely underestimated the human capacities for invention,
adaptation, and denial.

Animal defenders win seven major environmental conservation awards

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Save The Elephants founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton is to
receive the $100,000 Indianapolis Prize and accompanying Lilly Medal
on September 25, 2010. The awards are presented by Cummins Inc.,
maker of diesel engines. The 2009 winner was longtime Wildlife
Conservation Society field biologist George Schaller.
“Four decades ago,” recalled the award announcement,
“Douglas-Hamilton pioneered scientific study of elephant social
behavior. He led emergency anti-poaching efforts in Uganda to bring
the elephant population there from the brink of extinction. In
September 2009, Douglas-Hamilton worked to rescue a rare herd of
desert elephants in northern Kenya and Mali, threatened by one of
the worst droughts in nearly a dozen years. In the spring of 2010, a
devastating flood destroyed the Save the Elephants camp
in Kenya including staff tents, computers, and years of field
research notes. With a team of local researchers, the camp is now
being rebuilt.”

What do past spills predict for Deepwater Horizon impact?

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:

The Deepwater Horizon oil discharge, after 62 days, was
believed by the U.S. Coast Guard to have reached a volume of as much
as 156 million gallons–making it the second worst oil disaster in
history, 15 times larger than the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill in
Prince William Sound, Alaska. The Deep-water Horizon spill is
expected to reach 250 million gallons by the time BP completes
drilling four pressure relief wells in August 2010 and finally caps
the undersea gusher.
The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Carribean Sea
receive more than four times as much sunlight per year than the
Prince William Sound, however, and that translates into
exponentially greater activity by wind, waves, and microorganisms
to mitigate the effects of oil spills.

Reckoning the wildlife losses

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:

Who is compiling the Deepwater Horizon body count?
“Within each of the animal rescue stations set up along the
Gulf Coast is a makeshift morgue for oiled and ill creatures that
didn’t make it,” reported Katy Reckdahl of the New Orleans
Times-Picayune. “Pathologists and laboratory staff are carefully
cataloging each dead creature as part of larger criminal, civil and
scientific inquiries into how the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has
affected animals and their habitats.
“The operations cannot be photographed or observed by
outsiders,” Reckdahl said, “because they are part of a massive body
of evidence outlining the harm that the spill has caused wildlife,
in violation of federal laws such as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act,
Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act.”
Estimates that the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill killed 250,000
sea birds and 2,800 sea otters were developed from collecting and
evaluating the remains of more than 35,000 birds and 1,000 sea
otters. Exxon eventually agreed to pay $100 million as criminal
restitution for harm to wildlife, plus $900 million over 10 years in
settlement of damage suits.

BP partnered with The Nature Conservancy & other big green groups

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
WASHINGTON D.C.–“The Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of
its business partners,” observed Washington Post staff writer Joe
Stephens on May 23, 2010. “The organization also has given BP a
seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly
$10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated
corporations over the years.
“The Conservancy,” wrote Stephens, “already
scrambling to shield oyster beds in the region from the spill, now
faces a potential backlash as its supporters learn that the giant oil
company and the world’s largest environmental organization long ago
forged a relationship that has lent BP an Earth-friendly image.
Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked
alongside BP in a coalition that lobbied Congress on climate change
issues. And an employee of BP Exploration serves as an unpaid
Conservancy trustee in Alaska.”

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