The hit 2000 film Erin Brockovich, which tells the story of how a novice legal clerk holds a huge corporation liable for contaminating a town's drinking water with the carcinogenic chemical hexavalent chromium, or chromium (VI), ends in justice for those harmed. But as it turns out, Hinkley, California, the real-life town featured in the movie, is still contaminated.
Herbicide manufacturer Syngenta had an interesting way of celebrating Earth Day this year, touting the joys of pesticides.
Submitted by Anne Landman on
A prominent global warming skeptic funded by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation has publicly reversed himself and now agrees with the vast majority of mainstream climate scientists who conclude Earth's temperature really is quickly rising. Richard Muller, a physicist and well known climate skeptic, did his own research and calculated that the land is now 1.6 degrees warmer than it was in the 1950s -- figures that match those produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA). Billionaire Charles G. Koch, founder of the Charles G. Koch Foundation, is a well-known funder of global warming skeptics. Together with his billionaire brother, David, the Kochs own the country's largest, privately-held energy company, Koch Industries, which produces significant greenhouse gases and fights efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the U.S. Koch Industries has long worked to undermine environmental protections and protect corporate polluters. Koch Industries is also a long-time member and funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a nonprofit group that helps corporate representatives draft and advance "model" bills that benefit their bottom line, and get the bills into the hands of legislators who introduce them in state houses as though they were their own ideas. ALEC also provides corporate-drafted "model" resolutions legislators can introduce that are aimed at thwarting efforts to address climate change.
Independent testing commissioned by the Food Rights Network found toxic contaminants in San Francisco's sewage sludge "compost." In the sludge product given away free to gardeners from 2007 to March 4, 2010, are contaminants with endocrine-disruptive properties including PBDE flame retardants, nonylphenol detergent breakdown products, and the antibacterial agent triclosan. The independent tests were conducted for the Food Rights Network by Dr. Robert C. Hale of the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.
Watch a CBS 5 KPIX August 10, 2010 report providing a startling story of how San Francisco is violating its own precautionary principle law by dumping toxic sludge on city gardens.
Last month, I wrote Chez Sludge, the first inside report on the sewage sludge scandal unfolding in San Francisco, based on internal documents obtained by the Food Rights Network and now online in the Toxic Sludge wiki on SourceWatch.
San Francisco, under its "green mayor" Gavin Newsom, has since 2007 perpetrated a greenwashing scam upon city gardeners. The city, known for its environmentally sound practices and commitment to a precautionary principle approach to dealing with environmental hazards, has deceptively and fraudulently been giving away free "organic Biosolids compost," that is actually nothing but toxic sewage sludge from San Francisco and eight other counties, "composted" by the giant waste handler Synagro.
Energy in Depth and the gas industry are deploying spin doctors to counter a new documentary being aired nationwide on HBO. This time around, the truths unearthed about what the impacts would be of methane gas drilling into the Marcellus Shale unveiled by the film Gasland, by scientists, and by investigative journalists, are all victims of a prolific oil industry smear campaign.
Quick refresher: Marcellus Shale is an extensive underground formation of shale in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and other states in the region that has received renewed attention both because of new estimates of the quantity of methane gas believed to be under these rocks, and because of the significant environmental concerns that have been raised about the method of extracting the gas from the shale. "Hydrofracking" is a process in which a fluid is injected at high pressure into oil or methane gas deposits to fracture the rock above and release the liquid or gas below. The process uses enormous amounts of drinkable water, along with toxic chemicals. It also releases radioactive materials and other hazardous substances within the shale deposits, a fact that has raised significant environmental and health concerns.
Jeffrey Wigand became one of the most famous whistleblowers of all time after he revealed the tobacco industry's darkest secrets starting in 1994.
Submitted by Bob Burton on
Tom Harris, the Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition and a former PR executive with the High Park Group, was one of the
Next week, up to 20,000 people will descend on Copenhagen for the COP15 climate change conference, which aims to negotiate a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. Aside from the thousands of members comprising the 192 national delegations, there will be thousands more lobbyists from numerous industry lobby groups.
Submitted by Bob Burton on
Fred Singer is one of the veteran climate change skeptics appearing at the Have Humans Changed the Climate? conference in Brussels hosted by Roger Helmer, a British Conservative Party representative in the European Parliament. Billed as speaking on the topic of "Why can’t we trust IPCC?" [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], Singer staked out a position that even other sceptics disagree with.
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