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)

The proposed 2,100-acre expansion of Canada-based Cameco's Crow Butte Resources uranium mine near Crawford in western Nebraska is meeting opposition from members of the Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Tribe, including proponents of commercial hemp cultivation as an economic alternative for the impoverished Pine Ridge Reservation, which lies just across the South Dakota line.

The International Energy Agency is urging OPEC to boost production, with IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka at the World Economic Forum in Davos calling global supplies "very tight." Oil ministers from Iraq and Qatar at Davos were noncommittal, saying the decision would be made at the OPEC summit in Vienna next month. (Bloomberg, Jan. 25) Speaking in Caracas, price-hawk Venezuela's oil minister Rafael Ramirez rejected calls for boosting output, but said the "possible impact on the energy market" of a US economic downturn would be considered at Vienna. (Reuters, Jan. 25) President Hugo Chávez, sounding unusually conciliatory, said the price "is there, close to 100 dollars, hopefully it won't keep going up, hopefully it will stabilize." Prices reached $100 a barrel earlier this month, and now hover at around $90. (Reuters, Jan. 25) On Jan. 7, when prices hit $100, Bloomberg wrote: "The fastest-growing bet in the oil market these days is that the price of crude will double to $200 a barrel by the end of the year."

From Reuters, Dec. 12:

Residents say lives ruined by South Korea oil spill
TAEAN, South Korea - South Korean officials say they have made progress in cleaning up the country's worst oil spill but residents worried on Thursday about ruined livelihoods and conservationists saw damage lasting for years.

From the Global Justice Ecology Project, Dec. 7:

Indigenous Peoples shut out of Climate Change Negotiations
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia - Indigenous peoples representing regions from around the world protested outside the climate negotiations today wearing symbolic gags that read UNFCCC, the acronym of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, symbolizing their systematic exclusion from the UN meeting.

Perhaps the revolt against the hypertrophy of the technosphere has finally begun. We've already noted the rebellion at a Druze village in Israel against the local siting of a cellphone antennae, and the strike by New York City taxi drivers against the mandatory fitting of their cars with GPS. On Nov. 27, the New York Times' City Room blog reported on the case of Judge Robert M. Restaino of municipal court in Niagra Falls, NY, who in a fit of what the city's Commission on Judicial Conduct called "inexplicable madness," threatened to arrest all 70 people in his courtroom unless a cell phone that had gone off was turned over. Perhaps such draconian measures are called for, although a general abolition would be far preferable. On Dec. 4, the Times reported a startlingly hopeful development from the English countryside: