Earth First! blockades power plant

From Everglades Earth First!, Feb. 19:

Early Monday morning hundreds of concerned community members from Palm Beach County and all over the nation put their bodies on the line to halt construction of FPL's West County Energy Center (WCEC), demanding energy efficiency, truly clean, renewable energy and a moratorium on development in south Florida.

Just as oil is hitting $100 a barrel, come warnings of an impending global food shortage. In an article based on a study by Goldman Sachs, the UK's Telegraph Feb. 9 argues that "peak oil" is morphing into "peak food" as more farmlands are turned over to so-called "biofuels." Food is rapidly becoming less affordable from West Africa to South Asia, where Pakistan has introduced ration cards allowing lower-income citizens to buy flour at subsidized prices.

Clearing vast tracts of land for biofuels production would hinder—not help—the effort to slow global warming, according to two new studies published in the journal Science. Although such fuels emit less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels, clearing forests and other native ecosystems releases carbon dioxide from plants and soil through fire or decomposition. Additionally, cropland absorbs less carbon than the native ecosystems it replaces.

The US Forest Service, with minimal public notice and no formal environmental review, has approved a permit allowing the UK's Vane Minerals company to explore for uranium in the Kaibab National Forest just outside the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park. The site is less than three miles from a popular lookout over the canyon's southern rim. If deposits are found, it could lead to the first mines near the canyon since the price of uranium ore tumbled two decades ago. The Forest Service ruled that the canyon could be "categorically excluded" from a full environmental review because exploration would last less than a year and might not lead to mining activity. (Denver Post, Feb. 7)

Protesters from the Ardoch Algonquin and Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nations returned to the prospective uranium mining site near Sharbot Lake, Ontario, Feb. 4 after mediation talks with the provincial government that began last fall broke down. Robert Lovelace, co-chief of the Ardoch First Nation, said the protesters are standing outside the gate to the site to prevent the mining exploration company Frontenac Ventures Corp. will start test drills there, as it is legally entitled to do. "We're monitoring the site and if Frontenac Ventures attempts to bring a drill onto the site, we'll blockade that drill," he said.

A coalition of Native Alaskans and environmental groups filed suit in federal court Jan. 31 to halt oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea, which lies above the Arctic Circle between Alaska and Russia. Thirty million acres of polar bear, walrus, and whale habitat in the Chukchi Sea are scheduled to be opened to oil and gas companies Feb. 6, when the US Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) will hear bids for drilling leases. The suit claims that MMS did not adequately weigh the impacts on wildlife and Native villages along Alaska's North Slope.

China, which relies on imports for 50% of its oil needs, has established a system of national oil reserve centers, modeled on the US Strategic Reserves. Approved by the State Council in 2004, the four strategic reserve centers in the coastal areas of Zhenhai, Zhoushan, Huangdao and Dalian came on line in December. Together they hold reserves equivalent to 10 days of the nation's oil consumption. (Asia Online, Jan. 7) India announced this month it will begin construction on strategic storage centers this year as well, with the first site to be at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. (Times of India, Jan. 14)

This year the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual meeting of business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland in late January, was focused on a financial crisis that shook world stock markets Jan. 18-21—the worst in 60 years, according to one participant, US financier George Soros. Other participants tried to minimize the dangers that a likely US recession would pose for emerging economies. The present crisis "isn't the first and won't be the last," said Mexican central bank president Guillermo Ortiz. But according to former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel prize for economics, Mexico's economy isn't more resistant than in the past to contagion from the US, a situation made worse by the fact that the majority of banks in Mexico are now subsidiaries of US banks. (La Jornada, Jan. 24, 26 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)