Tag: environment

Harvard scrubs ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ film info from website

Harvard Law School scrubbed its website of an event page advertising a screening of the film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” amid concerns about endorsing violence.

Internet archives show the event page was removed sometime between Friday and Tuesday when The College Fix noticed it was gone. A post advertising the screening on Harvard’s Systemic Justice Project website also was removed prior to the event.

“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is a fictional story about climate activists who blow up a section of pipe in Texas, according to the film’s website.

The trailer opens with a man building a homemade explosive and ends with police arriving at the site of a pipeline that has been blown up. The characters call the bombing “justified” and “an act of self-defense.”

It is unclear if the Wednesday evening screening was canceled, rescheduled, or still took place.  The Fix contacted the HLS Film Society, communications office, and event moderator Professor Jon Hanson by email and phone Tuesday asking if the event had been canceled. None replied.

The Fix also reached out to the film society, Hanson, and the communications office March 28 with questions regarding the concerns about the film endorsing violence and university organizers’ stance on peaceful advocacy.

The film screening drew criticism online in recent weeks, including concerns that Harvard may be supporting violent activism. Critics include U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, an Illinois Republican, who said in a March 28 post on X that violent acts like those portrayed in the film are the reason he supports harsher penalties for eco-terrorism.

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GREEN NEW DEAL? All But One Of World’s 100 Most Polluted Cities Are in Asia

All but one of the world’s 100 most polluted cities are in Asia, according to a new report, underscoring how powerless the U.S. is in combatting the supposed threat of global warming.

The study, published by IQAir, focused on measuring fine particulate matter known as PM2.5, which gives an estimate of air pollution. Just nine percent of the over 7,800 cities analyzed worldwide managed to meet WHO’s standards, many of which were in America.

A majority of these cities are in India, with 83 cities identified as pollution hotspots. All these cities exceed the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines by around 1000 percent. Other heavily polluted countries including Bangaldesh, Pakistan and Burkina Faso.

The world’s most polluted city is Begusarai, a city of around 500,000 people in northern India, with an average annual PM2.5 concentration of 118.9 — 23 times higher than World Health Organization guidelines.

IQAir Global CEO Frank Hammes argued that such pollution is shortening people’s life spans.

“We see that in every part of our lives that air pollution has an impact,” he said. “And it typically, in some of the most polluted countries, is likely shaving off anywhere between three to six years of people’s lives. And then before that will lead to many years of suffering that are entirely preventable if there’s better air quality.”

Hammes added that there will be no improvements unless such countries implement “major changes in terms of the energy infrastructure and agricultural practices.”

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Pfizer Chemical Spill in Michigan Causes No Contact Advisory of Kalamazoo River

A no-contact advisory was issued for the Kalamazoo River after a chemical spill occurred at Pfizer’s manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

According to city health officials, Pfizer released over 1,057 gallons of methylene chloride in its manufacturing facilities processing area, which was then discharged into the Kalamazoo River.

Methylene chloride is a colorless liquid that Pfizer and other pharmaceutical manufacturers use as a solvent in their pharmaceutical medicines.

After the chemical spill occurred, Kalamazoo County Health Officials warned residents not to come into contact with the Kalamazoo River.

Kalamazoo County Health Officer Jim Rutherford stated, “We decided to issue a no-contact advisory for the stretch of river impacted by the methylene chloride release as a precautionary measure.”

“This advisory will remain in effect until further investigation and sampling indicates that there is no risk to public health,” added Rutherford.

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Biden Admin Preparing “Toughest Ever” Auto Emission Standards

Despite pretty much the entire country making it clear that EV mandates are hurting the industry (with major automakers like Ford and GM slashing investment), President Biden is forging forward with his “green agenda” even further.

This go-round, Biden is “preparing to roll out the toughest-ever” emissions restrictions, according to Bloomberg. 

The report says that the Environmental Protection Agency is poised to implement emissions limits that (Biden thinks) could significantly boost electric vehicle sales, requiring EVs to constitute about two-thirds of new car and light truck sales by 2032, a sharp increase from less than 10% last year. 

Unless, of course, people stop buying new cars. 

Regardless, this regulation supposedly aims to cut down on pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, and marks a major action under President Joe Biden’s administration and a step toward meeting the US’s Paris Agreement goal of slashing its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

The transportation sector is currently the largest contributor to the US’s climate pollution, Bloomberg writes. 

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FBI sent several informants to Standing Rock protests, court documents show

Up to 10 informants managed by the FBI were embedded in anti-pipeline resistance camps near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation at the height of mass protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The new details about federal law enforcement surveillance of an Indigenous environmental movement were released as part of a legal fight between North Dakota and the federal government over who should pay for policing the pipeline fight. Until now, the existence of only one other federal informant in the camps had been confirmed. 

The FBI also regularly sent agents wearing civilian clothing into the camps, one former agent told Grist in an interview. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, operated undercover narcotics officers out of the reservation’s Prairie Knights Casino, where many pipeline opponents rented rooms, according to one of the depositions. 

The operations were part of a wider surveillance strategy that included drones, social media monitoring, and radio eavesdropping by an array of state, local, and federal agencies, according to attorneys’ interviews with law enforcement. The FBI infiltration fits into a longer history in the region. In the 1970s, the FBI infiltrated the highest levels of the American Indian Movement, or AIM. 

The Indigenous-led uprising against Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access oil pipeline drew thousands of people seeking to protect water, the climate, and Indigenous sovereignty. For seven months, participants protested to stop construction of the pipeline and were met by militarized law enforcement, at times facing tear gas, rubber bullets, and water hoses in below-freezing weather.

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Germany Begins Felling 120,000 Trees From ‘Fairy Tale’ Forest to Make Way for Wind Turbines

The windmills are spinning golden subsidies in the central German ‘fairy tale’ forest of Reinhardswald, but the payment is the partial destruction of the 1,000 year-old ancient wood itself. Work has started on the clearing of up to 120,000 trees in the forest, the setting for many of the Brothers Grimm mythical stories, to provide access for an initial 18 giant wind turbines around the Sababurg ‘Sleeping Beauty’ castle. Who is opposing this massive destruction of the ancient forest teeming with wildlife with trees over 200 years old? Certainly not the Green party, now in power at national and local level. In fact the project is being led by local Hesse Green Minister Priska Hinz who is reported to have said: “Wind energy makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition and the preservation of nature. It is the only way to preserve forests and important ecosystems.”

There is some local press interest in Germany about the destruction of part of the forest that covers a 200 square kilometre area. Nevertheless, the mainstream media generally keep well away from covering environmental destruction when the Greens are doing it in the claimed cause of saving the planet. The BBC did cover the story under the headline ‘Battle over wind turbines in the land of Sleeping Beauty‘, but that was in 2013 when plans for the industrial development were first announced. It seems that the state-reliant broadcaster is less interested now that the Big Bad Wolf has finally made a meal of Little Red Riding Hood.

Pierre Gosselin, who runs the German-based science site No Tricks Zone, has been covering the outrage felt in a number of German quarters at the plans to destroy some of the Reinhardswald forest in the interest of inferior green technology. He feels the affair shows what an inefficient and costly scam green energy is. “It’s not cost-free, it’s full of corrupt and unresponsive politicians who no longer care about democracy, and it certainly doesn’t make the environment better. It’s a nasty juggernaut of waste, fraud, corruption and ecological degradation – with dead birds, turbine vibration sickness, strobe dizziness and landscape pollution,” he adds.

The Guardian has been curiously silent over the clearing of woodland to build wind turbines in Hesse. In 2020 it was less reticent about reporting on the construction of a 3 km highway in another Hessian forest at Dannenroder. Thousands of climate activists gathered on the site north of Frankfurt, it reported. Dannenroder tree-felling would be a catastrophe, environmental campaigners are reported to have said. “Some parts of this forest are 250 years old,” noted Nicola Uhde of the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (Bund), “and there is simply not much of this kind of woodland around anymore.” At the time, the Guardian noted the fate of Dannenroder was a “litmus test for the Green party” which governed the state as part of a coalition. It seems to have been remiss in not suggesting such a test with the Reinhardswald deforestation. But then it seems none of the usual climate activists have been protesting about the loss of trees and wildlife habitat on this occasion.

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California Man First to be Charged With Smuggling Greenhouse Gases Into US

A San Diego man was arrested Monday for smuggling greenhouse gasses into the United States from Mexico.

Federal prosecutors say this is the first criminal case of its kind in the country.

The indictment alleges Michael Hart, 58, imported hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) – a chemical compound commonly used for refrigeration, air-conditioning and aerosols – from Mexico and then sold them for a profit, which violates regulations created in 2020 ostensibly intended to “slow climate change.”

“This is the first prosecution in the United States to include charges related to the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020 (AIM Act),” said a press release from the Southern District of California. “The AIM Act prohibits the importation of HFCs, commonly used as refrigerants, without allowances issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).”

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Dam removal in CA to save salmon causes mass fish die-off as eco-activists pursue similar projects

Environmental groups are celebrating extensive efforts to remove dams across the United States, some of which produce carbon-free electricity. According to American Rivers, an anti-dam advocacy group, 65 dams were removed in 2022, and another 80 were removed in 2023.

Groups like American Rivers argue the dams are killing salmon and steelhead trout populations, encroaching on indigenous cultures, and harming water quality for people and wildlife.

Eyes wide open

The largest dam removal project in the history of the U.S. began on Northern California’s Klamath River last summer, with the removal of Copco No. 2, the first of four hydroelectric dams to be removed, also called “breaching” or “drawdowns.”

In January, the state began draining reservoirs behind the three remaining dams. The draining is not going well, especially for the fish the projects are supposed to be protecting.

Large amounts of salmon have been stranded on mud that is also trapping deer, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports. Officials are warning people not to try to walk through it, as it can be very dangerous. According to California Globe, a two mile sediment plume extends into the Pacific Ocean.

“We’ve been told we’re the experiment,” Siskiyou County Supervisor Ray Haupt told Just The News. “Eyes wide open. It’s coming to a neighborhood near you.”

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US-Mexico border: 100 billion gallons of toxic sewage creating a ‘public health crisis’

The U.S.-Mexico border region faces a public health crisis as billions of gallons of contaminated sewage flow from Mexico into San Diego, California, according to a newly released report.

“South San Diego County is in a total state of emergency related to transboundary pollution, and this is a public health ticking time bomb,” Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre told ABC News. “We are living in conditions that nobody in this great nation should be living in.”

The Tijuana River – which has been classified as an impaired water body, according to the U.S. Clean Water Act — flows north for 120 miles from Mexico to California before reaching the Pacific Ocean on the U.S. side of the border in the Imperial Beach, San Ysidro and Coronado coastal areas.

Over the last five years, 100 billion gallons of untreated sewage, industrial waste and urban runoff have been dumped into the Tijuana River, according to the International Boundary and Water Commission.

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Atomic Radius: The legacy of America’s nuclear weapons testing program

Americans are typically told the story of the scientists who built the atomic bomb as an intellectual race for the world’s most powerful weapon during wartime.

More than 100 atmospheric weapons tests were conducted in the U.S. and its territories between 1945 and 1962. It resulted in widespread radioactive fallout across much of the U.S., largely spread by prevailing winds and rain. In addition, contaminated waste was shipped and haphazardly stored across the country, creating new toxic Superfund sites stretching from Colorado to New York.

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