BIG Oil Ravages #Amazon National Park

Ecuador signs permits for oil drilling in Amazon's Yasuni national park

Companies could start extracting oil underneath key biodiversity reserve on Earth by 2016



By Adam Vaughan   

(theguardian.com) – Drilling for oil in a part of the Amazon rainforest considered one of the most biodiverse hotspots on the planet is to go ahead less than a year after Ecuador's president lifted a moratorium on oil drilling there.
Last August, Rafeal Correa scrapped a pioneering scheme, the Yasuní Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) initiative, to keep oil in the ground under a corner of the Yasuní national park in return for donations from the international community.

He said only $13m (£8m) of the $3.6bn goal had been given, and that "the world has failed us", giving the green light to drilling.

On Thursday, environment minister, Lorena Tapia, said permits for drilling had been signed for the 6,500-square-mile reserve, known as block 43, and oil production might begin as soon as 2016.

The permits allow Petroamazonas, a subsidary of the state oil company, to begin construction of access roads and camps to prepare for drilling.

Esperanza Martinez, an environmental activist in Ecuador, was quoted in a leading national daily as saying Petroamazonas had a bad record on oil spills and it could not be trusted to drill safely in the Yasuní-ITT.

Earlier this month, Ecuador's government rejected a petition calling for abandoning plans for drilling in the area, saying the organisers had failed to get enough signatures to trigger a national referendum.

The petition's backers, YASunidos, accused the government of fraud after only 359,762 signatures of around 850,000 submitted were deemed genuine – the threshold for forcing a referendum is 583,323.


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Can trees survive without Man? 

Can Man survive without...

SHOCKING!

Former US Governor Calls For Climate Change Wake-up

Bill Richardson

Wake up to the reality of climate change

 

By Bill Richardson



(CNN) – "Nothing poses a bigger threat to our water, our livelihood and our quality of life than a warming climate." Those are my words from 2006 upon the signing of an executive order on climate change for New Mexico when I was governor. 




 Almost a decade later, this statement still holds true. But now we have even more information about climate change, both the risks and solutions. 


The just-released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a collection of more than 800 leading climate scientists, reaffirms that climate impacts are already occurring and having a dramatic impact on society. Climate change is driven by our dependence on fossil fuels and is expected to get worse. In order to shift directions, we need nothing less than to rethink how we power our country.

Here's what we know: 

The climate science is settled. The IPCC report is the latest addition to a staggering body of scientific research connecting our energy choices to costly climate disruption. The report is consistent with several other authorities -- such as the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- that bring stronger language and greater certainty about climate change and its risks. Just as we know that smoking causes cancer, we understand that human activity causes climate change. 




 Climate change is happening now and we are all feeling the effects. Earlier this month, the American Association of Advancement of Science reminded us that "climate change is happening here and now." 





We are now witnessing how it is changing our world: The past winter was the eighth-warmest on record. For 348 consecutive months -- 29 years -- global temperatures have been above average
. 


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Long-time Activist and Hero
Bill Richardson -2007

Australia Takes FIRM Stand on CO2

Senate votes against abolition of carbon tax

20 March 2014 (AAP) – The Abbott government has failed in its first bid to scrap the carbon tax, with the Senate refusing to pass a package of bills to repeal the Gillard-era climate change policy. After three months of debate, the package of nine bills was finally put to a vote in the upper house today only to be swiftly rebuffed by Labor and the Australian Greens.

The result prompted cries of “shame’’ from the Liberal benches, but there was little real emotion on either side. Labor said it couldn’t support the repeal if it was to be replaced by the government’s direct action plan.

“Without a credible alternative, Labor cannot support the abolition of the existing clean energy policies,’’ shadow climate change spokesman Mark Butler said in a statement
.

The opposition is standing by its support of an emissions trading scheme, which under existing legislation isn’t due to begin until July 2015.Tony Abbott vowed to push on with the scrappingof the carbon tax and said Labor was breaking its commitment to remove the tax.

“The carbon tax is an act of economic vandalism,’’ the Prime Minister told question time.

“You can’t trust (Labor) anywhere near an economy.’’

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