Author: sparki

Some three hundred indigenous people from the Peruvian Amazon region of Madre de Dios are on their way to the town of Salvacion to evict the Texas-based company Hunt Oil from their ancestral territory.

According to reports on mongabay.com, hundreds of Peruvian police officers are waiting in the town for their arrival.

Last month, Indigenous leaders from the Madre de Dios issued a formal statement rejecting Hunt Oil’s presence in the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve—a legally protected biodiversity ‘hot spot’ which the government handed over to the company in 2006. The leaders warned Hunt Oil to voluntarily exit the territory within a week or they would be forced out.

This ultimatum was released just a few days after FENAMAD, the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and tributaries, took legal action to halt the company’s activities, which, according to the lawsuit, threatens the headwaters of the Madre de Dios river, Upper Alto Madre de Dios, the Blanco river, the Azul river, the Inambari river and the Colorado river.

Referred to by the company as “Lot 76?, the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve was created in 2002 to safeguard all six rivers, which are of critical importance to the indigenous Harakmbut, Yine and Machiguenga Peoples and to protect the region’s biodiversity. When the lawsuit was filed, FENAMAD’s leader stated his hope to “paralyze any activity inside the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, as otherwise the very existence of Madre de Dios’ indigenous people would Continue reading

This morning, activists have climbed a coal power station chimney in Oxfordshire and blocked a coal mine in  Derbyshire in protests over climate change.

A group bicycled around and forced their way into Didcot Power Station, run by N-Power, a subsidiary of German utility group RWE, at about 5:30am today.  Nine climbed the steps of one of the chimneys; they have supplies to stay there for a long time, during which the power plant will be unable to operate. A further 13 were are on the coal conveyor belt.

In Shipley, members of Earth First! entered UK Coal’s opencast coal mine near Shipley at 9.30am, occupying six vehicles there. They say they intend to stay as long as possible in a bid to stop new coal mines and power stations in the UK.

All this comes after more 1,000 people demonstrated at Ratcliffe-on-Soar’s power station for the Great Climate Swoop last weekend. 56 activists were arrested.

Liz Cartmel, a protester at Shipley says: “We recognise the important role coal mining has played in the local economy in the past, but at a time where our future survival hangs in the balance we need to work towards a future without climate destroying coal. Our only way out of the climate crisis is to reduce consumption and to use renewable energies such as wind and solar.”

As further proof that the Obama administration is serious about tackling climate change kissing up to big oil, the Dept of Interior announced today that it would go ahead with a second round of federal oil shale leases. While most news outlets focused on the DoI scrutinizing royalties for shale oil, the real news is that the Obama administration is opening up our public lands to destructive oil extraction. “With this new round of [research, development, and demonstration] leases, we hope to move closer to responsibly and sustainably developing our oil shale resources,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Of course there is nothing responsible or sustainable about oil shale. The process of extracting oil shale is similar to tar sands. The land is  strip mined, then the oil is baked out of the rock by heating it to high temperatures. This is a process that destroys the land, uses massive amounts of water (most US oil shale is in arid climates), and uses massive amounts of energy. If tar sands are any indicator, it may take as much as 1 barrel of oil to extract two barrels of oil, greatly boosting the carbon footprint of shale oil. Continue reading