Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Finding innovative solutions to supplying efficient, clean, safe, renewable and reliable energy for electrical power, transportation, heating and cooling. We look at problems created from the addiction to dirty fossil fuel energy, mountaintop removal and ecosystem disruption, global climate change, severe air and water pollution, and community dislocation and pollution, Extreme methods such as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), tar sands, hydroelectric dams and other damaging methods and sources are examined.
On July 11, Los Angeles joined communities across North America to call for a halt to shipping volatile and toxic crude oil via unsafe rail cars, which has caused numerous derailment explosions during the last six years as the practice has increased 4,000%. In particular, activists call for the City of L.A. to protect their communities and $1.3 billion river revitalization by opposing a crude by rail expansion in San Luis Obispo.
A documentary investigates the threat from volatile and toxic crude oil bomb trains now rolling through neighborhoods across North America. After five fiery accidents in the first five months of 2015, one can only ask: “Whose community will explode next?”
The time for action against oil trains is now! On Saturday, July 11, SoCal 350 Climate Action and its regional partners rallied at L.A.’s Union Station and held a teach-in in front of Olvera Street, calling for an end to bringing exploding bomb trains loaded with tar sands and other volatile crude oils into our communities.
The most recent oil spill on the Santa Barbara coast that has decimated wildlife and soiled California beaches with tar over a 350-mile area has been an unmitigated disaster. It illustrates weaknesses in basic safety measures for pipelines and crude by rail, as well as risks associated with industry plans to expand tar sands and other extreme drilling infrastructure on the West Coast.
A short documentary warns about the dangers posed by trains that transport explosive crude oil across North America. These 100-plus car trains carry highly flammable Bakken shale and Alberta tar sands crude oil and have been an increasingly common—and lethal—sight across communities in the United States.
Sick, starving and dying sea lion pups are washing up on the shores of California in record numbers this year. The culprit? An unusual blob of record warm water parked off the North Pacific Coast for a year and a half, affecting circulation and weather patterns with no relief in sight. Hence, sardine fisheries have collapsed with wildlife heading north.
Calvin Tillman, the former Texas mayor who took on the oil and gas industry, shared his wisdom with Southern California communities working to ban fracking and extreme unconventional drilling. Walker Foley interviews him and watch the clip from GASLAND.