Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
The Wall Street Journal sings the praises of SASOL’s move to industrialize the Lousiana Bayou with fracked natural gas. But the proposed project by the apartheid-supporting state oil company from South Africa, using Nazi technology, may spell the end for a 224-year-old community founded by freed slaves.
On March 1st, almost 1,000 people, supported by over 100 community organizations, marched through the streets of LA Harbor to launch the coast-to-coast Great March for Climate Action. To demonstrate the political will for a healthy planet, SoCal Climate Action Coalition 350 prioritized six urgent climate-change-focused requests of local, state and global level elected legislative decision makers.
The latest target of the unconventional oil craze is California hydraulic fracturing (fracking) the Monterey Shale in the central and southern parts of the state. With wildly optimistic predictions of an economic bonanza, the oil is carbon-intensive, requires massive amounts of fresh water, creates industrial pollution and seismic risk, and is impossible to regulate effectively because of significant scientific unknowns.
The time for climate action is now! On Saturday, March 1, the SoCal Climate Action Coalition 350 and its regional partners will rally in the shadow of a Port of Los Angeles oil refinery, sending marchers off on a 17.5-mile trek through the streets until they reach downtown Los Angeles. Hundreds of marchers will then continue their journey for 3,000 miles towards Washington D.C., reaching out to everyday citizens along the way on how they can fight climate change in their daily lives.
Since June of 2013 the Elsipogtog First Nation community, in New Brunswick, Canada, has gathered on Highway 11 to protest the seismic testing being conducted by a subsidiary of Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co. Since that time, several violent clashes between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and First Nation people have erupted. AlJazeera’s “Fault Lines” went to Mi’kmaq territory, to find out what happens when a First Nation says no to fracking.
The boom in North Dakota shale oil and the growth in Alberta tar sands, as well as the political costs of building pipelines has encouraged a move to ship more oil by rail. The move comes after high-profile disasters and the threat of massive climate disruption has caused heightened scrutiny of unconventional oil shipped by train to the global market.
David Osborn from Rising Tide asserts all new fossil fuel extraction must immediately stop if we want any chance of a habitable climate and a livable future. The climate movement needs more actions like Swamp Line 9 in Ontario, which shut down a pumping station to protest the Enbridge Line 9 Tar Sands Pipeline Reversal.