Animals

Boiling Point!
Polaris report finds water in First Nations communities a “violation of fundamental human rights”
by Kim Petersen
July 30, 2008

Neskantaga First Nation is one of the communities profiled in the Polaris report. It has been under a boil water advisory since 1995. “What other community do you know of in Canada that has been on boil water advisory for 13 years?"

In May, the Polaris Institute, a citizen-focused think tank, released Boiling Point!, a report about the “violation of fundamental human rights” occurring in First Nation communities across Canada.

Quote from the article below:
"It could also, conceivably, shut down Canada's only tactical bombing range at Cold Lake."

Tar Sands Industry Poised to Pollute Canada's Largest Freshwater Aquifer

CALGARY (July 24, 2008) – The Métis Nation in northeastern Alberta has
discovered that many of Alberta's in situ tar sands projects sit immediately
below a vast groundwater channel system that flows into the Athabasca River.
Given the accidental steam blowouts that have already occurred in the
region, the potential for pollution of Canada's largest freshwater aquifer
is very real.

"We are deeply concerned about these blowouts," says Rick Boucher,

Alberta First Nations and Allies Deliver Message To Investment Symposium in Calgary:
Dirty Tar Sands Oil Is A Risky Investment
Groups Dare Investors to Drink Community Water

CALGARY - July 16 - Members of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Mikisew Cree First Nation and environmental and social justice advocates traveled to Calgary today to the Oil and Gas Investment Symposium hosted by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers with a message for the hundreds of investors from the United States and around the world that Canada’s Tar Sands are a risky investment.

Oil sands boom swamps the Canadian wilderness
Environmentalists want tougher laws to halt the damage, writes Tim Webb
* Sunday July 20, 2008

Todd Dahlman scoops up a handful of oily sand and smiles. 'This is the
money - it even smells like money,' says the manager of Shell's Muskeg
River oil sands mine in the Athabasca region of North Alberta in Canada.

We are standing in the middle of a pit 50m deep that giant diggers
have hollowed out of the earth. Some 150m beneath our feet lie almost
a billion barrels of oil.

Forging a Politics Worthy of the Landscape
The Origins of the Western Greens

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
July 12 / 13, 2008

This essay is excerpted from Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance From the Heartland edited by Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair (AK Press, 2008).

For thirty-five years the Democratic Party has enjoyed a nearly unquestioned hegemony over environmental politics, even though the greatest gains for the Earth were made during the Nixon administration.

Bush lifts presidential ban on offshore drilling
By Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
12:57 PM PDT, July 14, 2008

WASHINGTON -- President Bush today lifted a long-standing presidential
ban on new oil and gas drilling off the nation's coastlines and urged
Congress to remove its own restrictions on offshore energy
exploration, stoking the battle over how Washington should respond to
high gasoline prices.

But the wall of opposition on Capitol Hill to relaxing the drilling
ban, though softening, appeared to be holding. A congressional

Carrier Sekani question review of gas pipeline
Written by GORDON HOEKSTRA
Citizen staff
Tuesday, 01 July 2008

The Carrier Sekani Tribal Council says a provincial review that gave a $1.1 billion natural gas pipeline project between Summit Lake and Kitimat the green light is inadequate, although it was expected.

The project -- a joint venture between Pacific Northern Gas and Kitimat LNG -- received an environmental assessment certificate last Friday after a review by the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office.

CLIMATE CHANGE WILL HAVE MAJOR IMPACT ON FISHING INDUSTRY, SAYS UN AGENCY
New York, Jul 10 2008 11:00AM

Climate change is already impacting the world's oceans and will have serious consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on fishing for their livelihoods, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Ecuador Constitutional Assembly Votes to Approve Rights of Nature In New
Constitution

Legal Defense Fund: Ecuador First Nation in the World to Shift to
Rights-Based Environmental Protection Using Legal Defense Fund Support

Ecuadorians Follow Lead of U.S. Communities Partnering With Legal Defense
Fund

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On July 7, 2008, the Ecuador Constitutional Assembly - composed of one
hundred and thirty (130) delegates elected countrywide to rewrite the
country's Constitution - voted to approve articles for the new constitution