Alberta's energy regulator ruled Thursday that it won't reconsider approvals for Suncor to expand an oilsands mine into a wetland once considered for environmental protection. The decision opens the door for expansion of the company's Fort Hills mine that has been before the regulators for more than two decades. It unlocks an estimated billion barrels of bitumen. "This is part of Fort Hills moving forward," said Suncor spokesman Leithan Slade. But scientists say it's also likely to doom a unique patterned fen — a peat-producing wetland featuring long strings of trees and shrubs separated by narrow pools that is host to 20 rare or endangered plant species and more than 200 species of migratory birds, including endangered whooping cranes.

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Tagging @politicsofcanada @abpoli

This week on why I think there is no hope for the Global North, the top comments on this reddit thread

“Some of this language around energy infrastructure was really more focused on supporting dirty energy instead of clean energy infrastructure. So how are you going to advance energy justice if you are also supporting the energy injustice by supporting liquefied natural gas facilities to go into communities that have been already used as sacrifice zones. That makes no sense. That’s actually a form of insanity In my opinion.”

—Sacoby Wilson, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEJH)

Toxic Tracks (encore)

The text “Toxic Tracks” on a background of railroad tracks.Background image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaida from Pixabay   On today’s show, we’ll hear an encore of a show from our archives that first aired in April. We’ll be looking at the environmental impact of the rail industry and hear from people in two communities currently impacted by rail-related contamination. In February, a Suffolk…

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Me whenever I remember the hardcore environmental subject,taught by one of the toughest professors at uni,then remember how RT made Logan an "environmentalist"

How the fuck one (1) guy riding a bicycle is going to do anything against air pollution? And considering how intelligent and well-educated Logan has always been(yes,always. He had plenty of problems at school,but none of them were with grades,AFAIK),he'd have realized it was merely an empty virtue signaling gesture. One would think Logan could help clean beaches and other places in Neptune(small scale,but still something with real results - making the city prettier and healthier),petition for proper disposal and treatment of residues(in all scales,not only in the industrial one),be invested in basic sanitation and water supply(those affect the poor disproportionally - see,Noir-relevant),engage in environmental education(bonus points if he gets to mentor troubled youth and take them under his wing - just like the professor did with him). Young!Logan might have plenty of flaws,but he got shit done.

Logan Echolls became what he hated the most - a virtue-signalling shithead who half-asses good deeds to stroke his own ego. Also,a State-Sanctioned Mercenary. Not very different from the vapid Hollywood he hated so much. I know the Doylist explanation was simply incompetence from RT,but can anyone think of an Watsonian one?

Hello hello! Please help a journalism graduate student out!

I’m currently writing an article for class regarding environmental racism, waste colonialism, and the impact of polluting facilities/waste being intentionally positioned closer to minority and low-income communities.

I would love to hear from anyone currently in or who has spent time in affected communities about their experience, any concerns that have been raised, if those concerns have been ignored or listened to, and anything else that you find important to speak about.

Please DM me if you can offer any comment on the issue, I would greatly appreciate your time!

Just a heads up as well that I would need your name, age, pronouns, profession, and contact info (at least an email) to list as a source. If you are not comfortable with giving your real name, you can give a pseudonym to be quoted with. Your personal information will NOT be published anywhere, that is purely for my source list which will only be seen by my professor.

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help! :)

everything is too expensive & urgent & i would love love LOVE to have a few days of things going WELL.

Texas Governor moves ahead with plan for border wall

Originally posted on LiberationNews.org Texas’ racist border wall continues; resistance still growing April 2, 2023 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Picture form ABCNews Nearly a year and a half after Texas governor Greg Abbott announced his plans to continue Donald Trump’s border wall, the project is ongoing at great expense to the public. After years of crowdfunding by the Republican governor and a…

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Someone upstairs has been wasting water for two days, they kept their tap open all-night, and as a result, the whole building isn't able to get water in their taps during the daytime.

This is also how many other things in the world work, you didn't do anything wrong, but we all suffer collectively. When the system is weak, we all choose to suffer the injustice bestowed upon us.

I don't think this line was even supposed to be funny but its the hardest I laughed in the entire game

Reality Check: No Country's Perfect

Hey,

Welcome. You're here because you're tired of the sugar-coated lies about countries being paradise on earth. Well, guess what? So am I. We're diving into the muck, the real dirt that everyone else is too scared to touch.

This blog? It's not your happy place. We're here to rip off the pretty masks and expose the ugly scars every country tries to hide. Corruption, injustice, pollution—you name it, we're calling it out.

Tired of the fairy tales? Good. Reality check: the world's a mess, and pretending it's not won't fix anything. We're here to face the ugly truth, not to coddle or comfort.

If you're ready to see what's really going on, without the filters and the feel-good nonsense, stick around. But be warned: it's not pretty.

Let's get real or get lost.

mayo

𝔄𝔫𝔦𝔥𝔦𝔩𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔡 - 𝔉𝔦𝔫𝔞𝔩 𝔇𝔞𝔴𝔫

I think a lot of our environmental problems are systemic and having to do with inequality of power throughout the planet, but I am not ever going to be the person that is so committed to the "systemic injustice" perspective that whenever something good happens, they get mad and have to come up with a reason that it is actually meaningless or even bad

And I have seen a lot of this exact thing

As environmental, social and humanitarian crises escalate, the world can no longer afford two things: first, the costs of economic inequality; and second, the rich. Between 2020 and 2022, the world’s most affluent 1% of people captured nearly twice as much of the new global wealth created as did the other 99% of individuals put together, and in 2019 they emitted as much carbon dioxide as the poorest two-thirds of humanity. In the decade to 2022, the world’s billionaires more than doubled their wealth, to almost US$12 trillion. The evidence gathered by social epidemiologists, including us, shows that large differences in income are a powerful social stressor that is increasingly rendering societies dysfunctional. For example, bigger gaps between rich and poor are accompanied by higher rates of homicide and imprisonment. They also correspond to more infant mortality, obesity, drug abuse and COVID-19 deaths, as well as higher rates of teenage pregnancy and lower levels of child well-being, social mobility and public trust. The homicide rate in the United States — the most unequal Western democracy — is more than 11 times that in Norway. Imprisonment rates are ten times as high, and infant mortality and obesity rates twice as high.

[...]

Our work has shown that the amount spent on advertising as a proportion of gross domestic product is higher in countries with greater inequality. The well-publicized lifestyles of the rich promote standards and ways of living that others seek to emulate, triggering cascades of expenditure for holiday homes, swimming pools, travel, clothes and expensive cars. Oxfam reports that, on average, each of the richest 1% of people in the world produces 100 times the emissions of the average person in the poorest half of the world’s population. That is the scale of the injustice. As poorer countries raise their material standards, the rich will have to lower theirs.

[...]

The scientific evidence is stark that reducing inequality is a fundamental precondition for addressing the environmental, health and social crises the world is facing. It’s essential that policymakers act quickly to reverse decades of rising inequality and curb the highest incomes.