Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
WilderUtopia sees environmental issues as publicizing harmful effects of human activity on the biophysical environment, and seeking methods to solve problems, transcend boundaries and build a better and more sustainable future. Environmentalism, a social and environmental movement that spans race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status, addresses environmental issues through advocacy, education and activism.
High School student Malia Street writes about her classmates from the Port of LA High School who traveled 200 miles to speak out at the hearing and rally against a plan by Phillips 66 to ship volatile and toxic tar sands crude via rail into California.
We must find cleaner, safer alternatives to these ecosystem-fouling, climate-disrupting extreme fossil fuels like tar sands and fracked oil shale, and their exploding oil trains, bursting pipelines, and accident-prone refineries.
The ongoing ecological disaster has been “temporarily controlled” in Porter Ranch, California, an affluent Los Angeles suburb. Yet, families continue to get sick, and SoCalGas/Sempra wants to oversee the testing inside of homes. While the Regional Air Quality regulators requested they close the leaking well down, the AQMD failed to listen to community demands for a permanent shut down of Aliso Canyon Storage Facility.
A new animal species has emerged in front of scientists’ eyes in eastern North America. With the emergence of coyote-wolf hybrids, called the coywolf, millions of these wily predators now roam at the edge of cities like Chicago and New York.
Wild bison will be allowed to migrate out of Yellowstone National Park and stay in parts of Montana year-round under a move by Gov. Steve Bullock. The decision won’t end the slaughter of some bison that roam outside of the park, yet pushes against the collusion between cattle ranching interests and wildlife managers using the threat of brucellosis to justify private property and development rights over the spirit of the wild.
Los Angeles comes alive this November and December, sponsored by SoCal 350 Climate Action, in calling for global climate agreements at the upcoming UN conference in Paris. This includes the Global Climate March (Nov 29) at L.A. City Hall, the Vision L.A. Climate Action Arts Festival (Nov 30 to Dec 11), the California Nurses Association Climate Convergence (Dec 3) at Pershing Square and Building Blocks Against Climate Change (Dec 12) along Wilshire Blvd.
Christopher Ketcham writes on our continuing anthropogenic (human-caused) extinction, and the ineffectual and often misguided attempts at appeasement for the destroyers of wilderness and consumers of the Earth’s bounty. E.O. Wilson’s push for parks and wilderness connected by corridors: half for us, half for them, might just be the answer.