Lmst

Chris Hedges Report: Climate & Mortality
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/05/26/chris-hedges-report-climate-mortality/
Eiren Caffall discusses her novel, All the Water in the World and her memoir, The Mourners Bestiary. By Chris Hedges ScheerPost This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble. In a world gripped by daily catastrophes, there is one that affects all but…
#Politics #Books #ClimateChange #Commentary #Gaza #Palestine #Uncategorized #ClimateDenial #CormacMccarthy #Denialism #Disease #EirenCaffall #EmanuelRingelblum #HannaKrall #HermanMelville #Illness #MarekEdelman #NathanielPhilbrick #SacrificeZones #TheChrisHedgesReport #ThorntonWilder

Murders, #megaprojects and a ‘new Panama Canal’ in Mexico

#Activists suspect murders of 15 #Indigenous community members are linked to their opposition to a proposed megaproject.

By Eoin Wilson
Published On 13 Jul 2020

Mexico City, Mexico – "The murders bore all the hallmarks of drug cartel executions. Fifteen victims – all members of the Ikoots Indigenous community – had been beaten, shot, and their bodies burned in a field just outside Huazantlan del Rio, a village in the municipality of San Mateo del Mar in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, in late June. An as-yet-unknown number of people were also 'disappeared'.

"At first the local government, headed by Mayor Bernardino Ponce Hinojosa, blamed the killings on a shadowy figure and an unnamed organised-crime group. Officials also acknowledged intra-community grievances and political infighting, caused by dissatisfaction with municipal elections and tension over last October’s mayoral election, which Ponce Hinojosa won.

"San Mateo used to be governed by an Indigenous 'popular assembly', which made decisions by consensus and served on a one-year rotation. But in 2017, this changed to a ballot-based electoral approach, leading to tensions that increased after the mayor’s disputed 2019 win.

"The Ikoots, most of whom consider the popular assembly to be the legitimate source of authority in the region, allege that the vote was fraudulent. They also accuse the mayor and a local businessman of being complicit in the wave of violence, sources told Al Jazeera, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

"Meanwhile, a collective of 15 civil society and teachers’ organisations, the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE), has accused the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) – one of Mexico’s most violent and territorially-ambitious cartels – of committing the murders.

"The allegations came in the same week that the CJNG was accused of the attempted assassination of Mexico City’s chief of police in an ambush with heavy weapons in which three people were killed.

"Although CNTE gave no evidence to support its accusation, many in San Mateo believe the claims because the cartel had already been active in their Istmo region, which boasts a wealth of mineral resources and a strategic location.

"The Istmo (or Isthmus in English) spans the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz at the narrowest point between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It is the site of the controversial 'Interoceanic' or 'Transistmico' corridor project, initiated by the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and opposed by many Indigenous communities."

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/7/13/murders-megaprojects-and-a-new-panama-canal-in-mexico

#Ikoots #IndigenousActivists #MegaInfrastructureProjects #CarbonIntensive #MegaCorridors #SDGs #CIIT #GulfOfMexico #IMFLoanSharks #SacrificeZones #CulturalGenocide #CulturalErasism #EnvironmentalDegradation #EnvironmentalDamage #Capitalism #CorporateColonialism #IndigenousPeoples #CulturalSurvival #Oaxaca #Veracruz #IndigenousCulture #ExtractiveIndustries #InteroceanicCorridor #TransistmicoCorridor #Istmo #IsthmusOfTehuantepec #Tehuntepec

From the Bretton Woods Project: Focus on #MegaProjects

"The [#WorldBank] ’s shift towards leveraging private sector finance for development (see Governance above), which has gained momentum since 2015, includes a particular emphasis on promoting ‘infrastructure as an asset class’, in order to crowd in institutional #investors. This policy initiative is highly dependent on mega-infrastructure projects – and, as noted by a letter sent by concerned economists in October 2018, currently lacks a framework for aligning such mega-projects with the Paris Climate Agreement or the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

"This is of major concern, given that many planned ‘mega-corridors’ in developing regions are predicated on building a new generation of carbon-intensive infrastructure. In many cases, the Bank continues to support such projects that, while not ‘fossil fuel investments’ per se, are part of such carbon-intensive mega-corridors (see Observer Autumn 2018)."

Paper: Infrastructure Megaprojects as World Erasers: Cultural Survival in the Context of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

Author: Susanne Hofmann, November 8, 2024

"This article explores the meaning of infrastructural changes resulting from the Corredor Interoceánico del Istmo de Tehuantepec (CIIT) infrastructure project for the cultural survival
of Indigenous peoples resident in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region through the lens of ontological justice. The CIIT is being promoted as a multimodal road and rail transport corridor that will link the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean, speed up global trade and benefit local residents. Based on interviews with affected residents in the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, this research found that there is a strong desire for the continuity of existing, collective life
projects, Indigenous languages, cultural identities, beliefs, spirituality, established political and legal systems, and solidarity economy. De facto, the CIIT infrastructure project functions
as a technology of erasure of other lifeworlds, imposing integration into the One-World World (Escobar, 2016) and assimilation of Indigenous peoples and Afrodescendant communities.
Contemporary legal frameworks are not sufficient to guarantee alterlivability (Hamraie, 2020). Therefore, infrastructural megaprojects based on modern/colonial-extractivist-
developmentalist premises continue to threaten the futurity of Indigenous and
Afrodescendant life projects.

[...]

"An increasing number of infrastructure corridors, such as the Corredor Interoceánico, are currently being built across the globe (e.g. the Belt and Road Initiative/China, Corredor Bioceánico/Paraguay; Corredor Interoceánico/Chile-Bolivia-Brazil; The Northern Transport Corridor in East Africa/Kenya-Ethiopia-South Sudan – just to name a few). These projects are directed at reducing ‘economic distance’ –i.e. speeding up the transport of goods across
geographical distance whilst lowering the cost (Hildyard, 2016: 20). In the process, infrastructure megacorridors restructure whole regions into purpose-specific zones for export, logistics, transit, housing development, resource extraction, manufacturing etc.

"Thereby, they fragment geographic space, generating a distinctive reterritorialisation of the space to develop sites of capitalist growth. Megacorridors connect what Lerner (2010) called 'sacrifice zones' – geographic areas where processes of natural resource extraction cause permanent environmental damage – to global circuits of capital. Across Latin America the social and environmental impacts of extractive megaprojects and resistance against them has
been widely documented (Aguilar Rivero & Echavarría Cango, 2019; Domínguez, 2015, 2017;
Domínguez & Corona, 2016; Ibarra García & Talledos Sánchez, 2016; Pérez Negrete, 2017; Rodríguez Wallenius, 2015). This article explores the meaning of infrastructural changes resulting from the CIIT project for the cultural survival of Indigenous peoples resident in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region through the lens of ontological justice."

Original paper:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X241294080?journalCode=lapa

PDF version:
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/120254/1/SHofmann_infrastructure_megaprojects_as_world_erasers_LSE_eprint.pdf

#MegaInfrastructureProjects #CarbonIntensive #MegaCorridors #SDGs #CIIT #GulfOfMexico #SustainableDevelopmentGoals #DeGrowth #IMFLoanSharks #SacrificeZones #CulturalGenocide #CulturalErasism #EnvironmentalDegradation #EnvironmentalDamage #Capitalism #CorporateColonialism #IndigenousPeoples #CulturalSurvival #IsthmusOfTehuantepec #OntologicalJustice #Tehuantepec #ExtractiveIndustries #Oaxaca #Veracruz #CorredorInteroceánico #BeltAndRoadInitiative #CorredorBioceánico #NorthernTransportCorridor #China, #Paraguay; Corredor #Chile #Bolivia #Brazil #EastAfrica #Kenya #Ethiopia #SouthSudan #IndigenousCulture #AfrodescendantCulture

A Follow Up on Yesterday’s Filing in the Boundary Waters Litigation: Post-Election Context

I wanted to share the reply brief in Twin Metals v. US as soon as it hit the docket, and it didn’t hit until the very end of workday. In this post, I just want to put this brief in the post-election context.

In this appeal, Twin Metals is trying to establish that:

a) it was correct to sue for violations of the Administrative Procedure Act. In the lower court, the federal government successfully argued that the mining company had come to the wrong court, and (under the Tucker Act) should have sued for breach of contract.

b) that it has a justiciable claim. Judge Cooper ruled that Twin Metals had failed in that regard. Since the US Forest Service withdrew the Rainy River Watershed lands from mineral leasing and development, the Bureau of Land Management acted lawfully when it denied the company’s Preference Rights Lease Applications and rejected its Mine Plan of Operations.

For some context, see this and this and this; you’ll find the original appeal here.

A win for the mining company in the DC Court of Appeals will send this case back to the lower court, or, as the brief has it, “give Twin Metals its day in court.” That’s all going to take much longer than a day, of course. A remand will take this case well past the inauguration, at which point the new administration can get to work.

Past is prologue: in 2016, Antofagasta also had a case before the federal district court. The mining company dropped the case once the Trump 45 administration had completed its reversal of Obama-era protections. (See the timeline at 22 Dec 2017.) The hurdle is higher now, with the mineral withdrawal in place, but there are plans to undo that. (See also this post.)

I also want to call attention to a couple of passages where the brief touches on the energy transition. These are hardly original or brilliant arguments, and they are largely derived from the amicus briefs submitted by the National Mining Association, the Range Association, and the Building Trades. But they hint at broader questions about the role of the administrative state, permitting reform, economic development, and national security — all questions the 119th congress will likely take up.

The first comes on page 3, in the Introduction.

At bottom, the government’s and intervenors’ atextual position would turn the longstanding mining regulatory scheme into an unworkable mess. Twin Metals has expended hundreds of millions of dollars in exploration and project development and remains committed to developing a sustainable, modern mine that supports the local community and provides critical minerals for clean-energy technology and national security. But no mining regulatory system could work if applicants for permits sink enormous sums into discovering valuable deposits and satisfying all the regulations’ criteria, only to have the government arbitrarily deprive them of a reward. That is certainly not the scheme Congress and the agencies established here.

The second, page 24:

Arbitrary mining lease denials harm not just permitholders but the public too…. BLM’s unlawful actions have cost construction workers in northern Minnesota nearly $200 million in wages and benefits….. Small towns and school districts lose tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue every year the land sits unmined…. And it is impossible to quantify the environmental, economic, and national-security costs of not mining “critical minerals” for clean energy like copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum, and palladium—the minerals Twin Metals seeks to mine.

#ANTO #corruption #criticalMinerals #energyDominance #energyTransition #fragmentedTransition #GreenRight #sacrificeZones #Water

‘Sacrifice Zones’: Plastic Production is Decimating These 5 Communities Around the World #plastics #pollution #fossilfuels #plasticpollution #toxicchemicals #health #sacrificezones https://glblctzn.co/KrVhgWNvZIb

Plundering and polluting for profit regardless of the human, social and environmental consequences. Eg in #Kazakhstan 450 #nucleartests from 1949-1989 aka #Semipalatinsk Test Site or The Polygon

https://www.eddohartmann.nl/work/sacrifice

#Sacrificezones #Capitalism #StateCapitalism #Militaryindustrialcomplex #ecocide #Anthropocene
#eddohartmann #photography

New Study: #FossilFuels Disproportionately Impact #Black, #Brown, #Indigenous, and #Poor Communities Throughout The Supply Chain

#CarbonOffsets, #CapAndTrade, #CCS and Other “#CarbonCentric” Policies Fail to Mitigate Air and Water #Pollution

by Tyler Kruse
June 5, 2023

"The study concludes that policies solely focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions without reducing fossil fuel usage could fail to reduce local air and water pollution, fail to alleviate public health harms, and end up perpetuating the racially inequitable impacts of the fossil fuel economy.

WASHINGTON DC (June 5, 2023)–"A new peer-reviewed study details the risks of President Biden’s support for expanded fossil fuel production and exports. Despite campaign promises to take on fossil fuels, Biden has approved massive extraction projects and allowed a surge of crude and LNG exports. Against the backdrop of attacks on environmental justice in Congress – including the recent rollbacks to NEPA in the Fiscal Responsibility Act – and the Supreme Court’s undercutting of the Clean Water Act, the study titled 'Fossil fuel racism in the United States: How phasing out coal, oil, and gas can protect communities' finds that fossil fuels impose unfair and unjust health harms on Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor communities.

"The study identifies the public health harms as well as the disproportionate impacts on communities at each stage of the #coal, #oil, and #gas lifecycles – #extraction, processing, transport, and combustion. It was authored by experts from Greenpeace USA, Salem State University, and Taproot Earth and published in Energy Research & Social Science.

"The publication draws from 200+ academic studies which reveal a consistent pattern: fossil fuel pollution is associated with #asthma, birth complications, #cancer, #respiratory disease, heart conditions, and premature mortality. Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities bear a disproportionate burden of these harms. These same communities are hit hardest by the impacts of the climate crisis.

"Additionally, the study concludes that policies solely focused on reducing #GreenhouseGas emissions without reducing fossil fuel usage could fail to reduce local air and water pollution, fail to alleviate public health harms, and end up perpetuating the racially inequitable impacts of the fossil fuel economy. Black, Asian, Hispanic or Latino, and low-income populations already have an elevated burden of exposure to air pollutants that can harm the respiratory system known as PM2.5, a pattern that is consistent across nearly all emission source types. Poorly designed climate policies could concentrate this pollution in community 'hotspots' even as overall carbon emissions decline.

"Dr. Tim Donaghy, research manager at Greenpeace USA and a co-author of the report, said: 'Fossil fuels harm both the climate and our health and must be phased out as fast as possible. But if our climate policies only focus on reducing carbon, we are missing an opportunity to greatly improve health in impacted communities. Carbon-centric policies being pushed by the oil and gas industry won’t alleviate fossil fuel racism and could worsen it for communities who already bear the brunt of the industry’s pollution. A better approach is to shift the focus to the root cause of both carbon and pollution, which are fossil fuels themselves. Policymakers should explicitly mitigate air and water pollution, advance #EnvironmentalJustice, and meaningfully include historically targeted communities in climate policy-making and implementation.”

"Noel Healy, professor of Geography and Sustainability at Salem State University and co-author of the report, said: 'Alarmingly, Biden is approving new #drilling at a faster rate than the Trump administration. This includes approving '#CarbonBombs' at the #AlaskaWillow and the #LNGAlaskaProject, and recently breaking a major G7 climate promise by financing an #Indonesian #OilRefinery. Continued approval of harmful and #Extractive fossil fuel licenses is a catastrophic climate and public health failure.'

"The study argues that #SystemicRacism enables the fossil fuel industry to avoid paying the true cost of its pollution by passing it on to communities of color. It identifies fossil fuel racism as a subset of environmental racism characterized by the disproportionate and racialized effects of climate change, fossil fuel extraction, transportation, processing, and consumption on Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor populations.

"The fossil fuel industry is fueling a public health crisis that disproportionately affects communities of color and low-income communities. Healy said: 'We can tackle the #ClimateCrisis, improve public health, and confront systemic racism by phasing out fossil fuels and enacting a #GreenNewDeal.'

"The study makes the following recommendations:

- The U.S. should implement a managed phase out of fossil fuel production to drive absolute pollution reductions in ‘#SacrificeZones’ and to align our policy with 1.5°C pathways.
- Enact a Green New Deal to halt climate change and build a more just and regenerative economy.
- Protect and expand democratic spaces."

Source:
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/new-study-fossil-fuels-disproportionately-impact-black-brown-indigenous-and-poor-communities-throughout-the-supply-chain/

#EnvironmentalRacism #BigOilAndGas #WaterIsLife #CorporateColonialism

> “#FossilFuels have always required those #SacrificeZones,” .. risks.. often borne by certain groups of people.. the most vulnerable people in society.”.. indigenous and the poorest people.. had their lands mined and dealt with the health impacts.
> “Nuclear carries those same risks and that same logic ...I don’t think that’s the solution,” .. renewables could power.. the world’s economies. “We can do it without huge risks and costs..[of] #nuclear ..”
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/naomi-klein-says-building-new-nuclear-power-plants-doesnt-make-sense/news-story/366f5d82c74c17e0bf69785bb3262066
#NaomiKlein

#SlowViolence of landscape destruction: More specifically, #fossilfuels require “#sacrificezones” – places that are heavily #polluted or damaged by #industry activities, and whose inhabitants are subject to elevated #health #risks, for the “supposed greater good of economic progress” [49]. The global fossil fuel industry creates multiple such sacrifice zones, often geographically distant from each other, but linked together by global fossil fuel #supplychains.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629623001640

Since it seems there are way too many doubting Tomas' in the world =>
SkyFi's Satellite Image Confirms Massive Clothes Pile in Chile's Atacama Desert

https://www.skyfi.com/blog/skyfis-confirms-massive-clothes-pile-in-chile
#fashion #fashiondump #Chile #sacrificecountry #sacrificezones #clothingdump #climatecrisis #atacamadesert

Frío y contaminado una vez más en la cuenca de #SantiagodeChile #CalidadDelAire no está para salir y hacer ejercicio. #PonteLaMascarilla #AirQuality #Chile #MaskUp #sacrificezones #sacrificecountry #sacrificechile

How Regulation Came to Be: Monongah Mine Explosion (23d in series)

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/3/15/1370022/-How-regulation-came-to-be-Monongah

#HowRegulationCameToBe #Regulation #History #Coal #Steamships #Railroads #Electricity #Iron #Steel #MineDisaster #Monongah #MineralRights #FairmontCoal #ConsolidationCoal #JohnDRockefeller #Corruption #Tipple #MineDisaster #MineExplosion #ImmigrantLabor #WestVirginia #SacrificeZones #Methane #CoalDust #DavittMcAteer #CasualtyUndercount
1/

Seventeen (!) #LNG terminals being built along the #Louisiana coast, supposedly to supply Europe. But Europe is fast turning to clean energy and energy efficiency. They won't need this fossil #gas.

This is par for the course for the #FossilFuel industry:
Greed.
Boom and bust cycles.
Disregard for "#externalities" like polluted waters, the health of nearby residents, the health of the planet.
The use of "#SacrificeZones" (and sacrifice people).

#colonialism
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ukraine-is-a-false-justification-americas-destructive-new-rush-for-natural-gas

"In plaats van leefbaarheid voeren optimalisatie en efficiëntie de boventoon. We hebben efficiënte snelwegen, landbouw, fabrieken, kassen en distributiecentra. Die zijn ingericht om slechts een enkele functie te optimaliseren. Deze ideologie van efficiëntie heeft een inktzwarte keerzijde. Efficiënte ruimte is vervreemdend, zielloos en schadelijk voor mens en natuur."

https://www.trouw.nl/opinie/de-inktzwarte-keerzijde-van-efficientie-oneerlijke-verdeling-van-de-ruimte-en-een-ongezonde-leefomgeving~b3313ae4/

#meenten #commons #sacrificeZones