Note: The following are the top ten articles from Climate Connections from 2012, based on the number of views each story received. Several articles were written by GJEP, or were sent to Climate Connections by the original authors. They are posted in reverse order, from number 10 through number 1. Our blog received a record 270,000 visitors in 2012 from over 200 countries.
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Happy New Year,
-The GJEP Team
10. Three responses to Bill McKibben’s new article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” (July 24)
By Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP, Rachel Smolker of BiofuelWatch, and Keith Brunner, GJEP Communications Associate
Bill McKibben, in his new Rolling Stone article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” does an effective job at summarizing the hard and theoretical numbers that warn us of the devastating impacts of continuing to burn the Earth’s remaining fossil fuel reserves–yet it somehow falls short of its stated goal to help mobilize a new movement for climate action. Continue reading here
9. Breaking News: Secret US military testing of radiological materials on poor and minority communities (September 24)
By Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP, and Orin Langelle, GJEP Board Chair
During an interview we conducted last week in St. Louis, MO, Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor gave us a long description of research she had conducted into a major military cover up of the use of U.S. citizens as test subjects for military experiments related to the Cold War.
Dr. Martino-Taylor told us that specifically, her research identifies a coalition of medical researchers that grew out of the Manhattan Project, which she refers to as the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition. This coalition conducted various secret radiological tests around the nation. The group was involved in previously known “injection” and “ingestion” human-subject studies that exposed unwitting victims to radioactive material such as plutonium and strontium-90. Continue reading here
8. Breaking News: Native Americans protest Keystone XL from a cage (March 22)
Sent to Climate Connections straight from the source
Marty Cobenais, Red Lake Ojibwe, arrested at Keystone White House protest in Sept. 2011 (from Censored News) Photo Shadia Fayne Wood
Native American’s gathering in Cushing, OK for a planned Thursday protest of President Obama’s anticipated words of praise for the Keystone XL pipeline will be forced by local authorities to hold their event in a cage erected in Memorial Park. The protestors were stunned that their community, so long mistreated, would be insulted in such an open manner instead of being given the same freedom of speech expected by all Americans simply for taking a stance consistent with their values. Continue reading here
7. Permafrost melt soon irreversible without major fossil fuel cuts (February 22)
By Stephen Leahy. Source: Inter Press Service
Without major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, as much as two-thirds of the world’s gigantic storehouse of frozen carbon could be released, a new study reported. That would push global temperatures several degrees higher, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable. Continue reading here
6. Fukushima reactor 4 poses massive global risk (May 22)
By Andy Johnson. Source: CTVNews.ca
Photo: AP /Kyodo News
More than a year after a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a massive nuclear disaster, experts are warning that Japan isn’t out of the woods yet and the worst nuclear storm the world has ever seen could be just one earthquake away from reality.
The troubled Reactor 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is at the centre of this potential catastrophe.
Reactor 4 — and to a lesser extent Reactor 3 — still hold large quantities of cooling waters surrounding spent nuclear fuel, all bound by a fragile concrete pool located 30 metres above the ground, and exposed to the elements. Continue reading here
5. Anonymous takes down Monsanto.com-Their message: We fight for farmers (January 25)
Source: Organic Common Sense
In a thread of hack events from the Anonymous group, the most recent target has been Monsanto.com. Anonymous, which briefly knocked the FBI and Justice Department websites offline as well as Music Industry websites in retaliation for the US shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload, is a shadowy group of international hackers.
4. Canada: Harper launches major First Nations termination plan (November 9)
By Russell Diabo. Source: Intercontinental Cry
Photo: Intercontinental Cry
On September 4th the Harper government clearly signaled its intention to:
1) Focus all its efforts to assimilate First Nations into the existing federal and provincial orders of government of Canada;
2) Terminate the constitutionally protected and internationally recognized Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights of First Nations.
Termination in this context means the ending of First Nations pre-existing sovereign status through federal coercion of First Nations into Land Claims and Self-Government Final Agreements that convert First Nations into municipalities, their reserves into fee simple lands and extinguishment of their Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty Rights. Continue reading here
3. Video: Canada’s Tar Sands: So destructive it makes its well-paid workers want to quit (February 24)
By Brian Merchant. Source: TreeHugger
Amidst all the political wrangling over the Keystone XL pipeline, some may lose sight of what the fight is ultimately about. And that, of course, is one of the most environmentally devastating projects ever undertaken: the tar sands mining operation in Alberta, Canada. Today, a Reddit user who says he was until recently a well-paid tar sands worker, shared the following video—along with why he quit his job over moral objections to the destruction his work was helping to cause. Watch the video here
2. Breaking News: Leah Lynn Plante sentenced to prison after refusing to testify before grand jury (October 11)
By Will Potter. Source: Green is the New Red
Photo: Green is the New Red
Today Leah Plante will again appear before a federal grand jury in Seattle, Washington, for the third time, and refuse to testify about her political beliefs and political associations. It is likely that she will be imprisoned for her principled stance against what she calls a witch hunt against local anarchists.
The grand jury is investigating anarchists in the Northwest, following FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force raids in search of “anarchist literature.” Two other anarchists, Matthew Kyle Duran and Katherine Olejnik,have already been imprisoned for refusing to cooperate. Continue reading here
1. Rio+20 Breaking News: Activists who spoke at the Peoples’ Summit killed (June 29)
Source: Front Line Defenders
EJOLT partner Professor Marcelo Firpo has just send us a sad message:“I was with two fishermen on 19 June in a meeting at Peoples Summit discussing the impacts of big projects (basically oil, mining and steel) in Rio de Janeiro State. Three days later they disappeared when went to work. They have just been found dead. The media is considering this case without importance and we will need more national and international pressure in order to protect other people and to investigate who have killed them.”On 24 and 25 June 2012 the bodies of human rights defenders Mr Almir Nogueira de Amorim and Mr João Luiz Telles Penetra were found following their disappearance on 23 June 2012. Continue reading here
