BDPollution

Chevron is back up against the ropes after a United States federal court judge denied a bid made by the corporation to stop Ecuadorian plaintiffs from collecting a damages award of $18 billion. Federal court judge Lewis Kaplan was asked to freeze assets owned by the plaintiffs until the result of a fraud lawsuit against the Ecuadorians was known. Unfortunately for Chevron, the bid was denied.

Adding to that, just a few days before the bid to freeze assets was made, Chevron was hit with one more nail in the coffin. An Ecuadorean appeal court upheld the $18 billion judgement over the oil damage in the county’s Amazon region. If the fraud lawsuit against the Ecuadorian plaintiffs fails, the oil giant has just one more option left, and that’s to make an appeal to Ecuador’s Supreme Court.

What caused the pollution?

The exact circumstances of the pollution in question happened under Texaco, which has been part of Chevron Corporation since 2000. Texaco developed and operated the Lago Agrio oil field in the country from 1972 up until 1993, and during that time it is alleged that they did not dispose of industrial waste safely. It has been claimed that Texaco released up to 18 billion gallons of produced water into the Amazon rainforest, leaving a toxic trail that damaged vegetation, killed wildlife, and caused a variety of sicknesses in the local indigenous population. An environmental audit of the area pressured Texaco and Petroecuador, the two companies that extracted oil from the Lago Agrio oil field, to fund a $40 million remediation program from 1990 onwards. In 1998 a scientific team took water and soil samples only to find that around half of the samples analysed still had unsafe levels of petroleum hydrocarbon in them.

Action taken against Chevron 

After years and years of campaigning, the Ecuadorian people finally managed to bring a case against Chevron in 2003. 30,000 Ecuadorean people were responsible for creating enough pressure and finding enough money to take on the multi-national corporation, and it paid off 8 years later. On the 15^th of February 2011, an Ecuadorian court fined the oil company $8.6 billion for polluting the Amazon rainforest and the consequences of the damage. It was claimed during the lawsuit that local cancer rates increased, and crops and livestock were lost to the pollution.

The penalty rose to $9.5 billion dollars once an additional 10 per cent for reparations was included, but the total sum requested by Ecuadorian plaintiffs ended up being $27 billion. The court granted $18 billion, and the result of the case set a precedent, because it was the first instance of indigenous people suing a multinational corporation in a court located within the country the pollution actually happened in. Environmental activists celebrated and saw it as a start to charges being brought against other companies that pollute developing countries without punishment.

Chevron fights back 

Chevron has opposed the fine since it was imposed, and filed a lawsuit against the Ecuadorian plaintiffs for fraud. The corporation believes that they have cleaned up their part of the damage to the rainforest, and they are being charged too much for the damages that have been claimed against them. Chevron has claimed that fraud and corruption have been used by the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, and the racketeering lawsuit they filed in New York in 2011 has yet to be decided.

This is not the first time that Chevron has been accused of illegal pollution, and they have even broken laws in America concerning pollution, namely the Clean Air Act. Other notable incidents were the 2002 oils spills in Angola that resulted in a claim for $2 million by the government of Angola for the damage. Only last year Chevron were prohibited from activities in Brazil after over 400,000 litres of oil were leaked into the ocean off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The legal action that is being brought against Chevron in the Brazil case is demanding that $10.6 billion is paid in damages.

The controversy over Chevrons actions in Ecuador and whether they have been treated unfairly has been debated many times, but perhaps this new ruling is the beginning of the end to the case. What is certain is that no amount of money can turn the clock back and make good the damage done to the Amazonian rainforest.

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This is a guest post.

Olivia Lennox is a green freelancer from London. Normally she’ll be extolling the virtues of tempurpedic products or the latest organic soaps, but she has her finger on the pulse of international environmental law too.

On Oct. 4, 2010, in recognition of World Habitat Day, Habitat for Humanity will raise awareness of the need for improved shelter and highlight Habitat’s priorities: the worldwide connection between human health and housing, and, in the United States, neighborhood revitalization. These themes echo the United Nations’ chosen theme for 2010 for events in the host city of Shanghai, China and the rest of the world: “Better City, Better Life.”

Every week, more than a million people are born in, or move to, cities in the developing world. As a result, the urban population of developing countries will double from 2 billion to 4 billion in the next 30 years. (Kissick, et al: 2006)

By the year 2030, an additional 3 billion people, about 40 percent of the world’s population, will need access to housing. This translates into a demand for 96,150 new affordable units every day and 4,000 every hour. (UN-HABITAT: 2005)

Habitat for Humanity hopes that by raising awareness and advocating for universal decent housing we can dismantle and alter the systems that allow for poverty housing and make an affordable, decent place to live a reality for all.

Habitat for Humanity World Habitat Day events

Around the world, many Habitat for Humanity local offices have organized World Habitat Day events. Habitat for Humanity’s 27th annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project is a World Habitat Day event this year. It will be held Oct. 4 – 8 in six cities in the United States. Held in a different location each year, Habitat’s Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project is an annual, internationally-recognized week of building that brings attention to the need for simple, decent and affordable housing. This year, the Carters will work alongside volunteers in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore and Annapolis, Md.; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn.; and Birmingham, Ala. to build, rehabilitate and improve 86 homes.

As UK leads one of the largest coordinated global event 10:10:10, the Global day of Doing, this news sounds great. UK embraces renewable energy to a whole new level.

Details, basically this wind farm is one of the world’s largest offshore wind farm situated off the Thanet in Kent. The project was at a cost of £780m ,and is expected to generate enough electricity to power 240,000 homes.

Read more about it.

Its great to hear that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has endorsed 10/10/10, the Global Day of Doing. As he quotes

“It’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work on building the clean energy future that will generate economic opportunity and provide a better, safer, healthier world for our children. On October 10, I encourage everyone to do his / her part to be part of the solution to the climate challenge.”

He further said

“It’s time to roll up our sleeves.” Let’s get to work pulling in those 35 remaining countries and signing up even more work parties for 10/10/10. Together, we’ll show our nations what unity is all about.

Why the rest 35 countries? Apparently in 350.org website, 25 countries are still not active about 350 as in no activities relating to 350 have taken place. If they did last year, probably not this year. Just before posting this article, I was going through the list of the countries at 350.org website.

Read more about it.

The enviro fair was held as mentioned in the previous post on August 19th-21st, 2010. When I arrived at the fair, I was wondering if I was at the right place, it just did not feel right.

Well I got out of the car, and walked all the way ( it was quite some distance) to our 10:10 stall and was awed. As you can see from the pictures, the stall was truly amazing. A great start to the 10:10 campaign in Bangladesh.

Before I began the tedious task to go around signing up people, I thought why not walk a bit, understand the people who are there. So I adventured, peeping through the different stalls, some to be quite impressive. An eco-resort, a company selling solar panels while other products being powered by solar.

Then few of our team at 10:10 got their guns loaded( giving them their sign-up sheets and a pen) and we began approaching people about 10:10.

The enviro fair turn-out was not high being a festive month and I just cause of the downpour, overall a successful 10:10 event.

More pictures can be seen at 10:10 flickr page here.

In my last post, I mentioned about the campaign on PutSolarOn.it, a campaign targeted towards world leaders, so that they also start by getting to work. The objective, placing a solar panel on top of all head buildings.

Bangladesh and India have recently powered their head buildings with solar power. Bangladesh Prime Minister office was lighted by solar power something earlier this year. Soon after the Prime Minister’s office, the Bangladesh Bank was also powered by solar. Looks like in Bangladesh, the politicians are a bit ahead in fighting climate change compared to the West but there a still a lot of work that needs to be done.

Governor of West Bengal in India, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, installed solar panels on the Kolkata Raj Bhavan, the Governor’s Residence, in December of 2009.

Even before the PutSolarOn, leaders have taken action and this shows that you too as an individual can do so much without waiting for someone do it for you. Anyways, the people at 350.org were quite excited when they found out. Get it here.

Another campaign initiated by my favorite group 350.org in light of the 10/10/10 Global Work Party called the Put Solar On It, there aim to target world leaders on installing solar panels on the roof of where the leaders work. Like the US, the White House, India the Rashtrapati Bhavan; in Mexico they call it Los Pinos.

We all know that installing solar panels will not solve the climate crisis, but will send a strong message, setting an example. This is a perfect opportunity for leaders to get involved on the 10:10 goal.

As countries make strong decisions on cutting their CO2 emissions, I came across a list of the top 10 countries using solar power and to tell you the truth, its quite fantastic.

1. Germany (9,785 MW)
2. Spain (3,386 MW)
3. Japan (2,633 MW)
4. United States (1,650 MW)
5. Italy (1,167 MW)
6. Czech Republic (465 MW)
7. Belgium (363 MW)
8. China (305 MW)
9. France (272 MW)
10. India (120 MW)

Courtesy of 1bog.org

The month of June marks World Environment Day, World Ocean Day, and Global Wind
Day – three environmentally conscious days whose main purpose is to spread awareness of environmental issues taking place in today’s world. The Gulf oil spill is a huge reminder that now is the time to invest, innovate, and utilize specific renewable energy technologies that can reduce our dependency on oil consumption and preserve our environment.

•Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition (OREC) is a national trade association that is “dedicated to promoting marine and hydrokinetic energy technologies from clean, renewable ocean resources.” They incorporate over 40 members, some of which are literally “turning the tide” when it comes to renewable energy by using the known green technique of harnessing ocean waves and currents to produce energy.

• Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is doing this is via their PowerBuoy 40 that acts as a “wave energy converter” while submerged.

• The Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) is installing power systems all along the Gulf Stream’s ocean currents (which has 21,000 times the energy of Niagara Falls). With the constant flow of the Gulf Stream, if ORPC harnesses just 1/1000 of the Gulf’s renewable energy that would still be enough to power up to 7 million homes.

Wave power technology, while underused, has been a known technology, for years. However, a future green source with a lot of potential can be found in algae within the ocean. Using algae as a source of energy is a new ideology but many believe them to be “the ultimate in renewable energy”. Half of algae’s weight is based off of oil, which can be made into bio-fuel that could be used on anything from cars to airplanes. Considering that there over 65,000 known algae species this could potentially be a big time future energy source.

The future of green energy depends upon the ability to use it efficiently. This means that everything from cars to building structures would need to be much more efficient to require less consumption. Nissan set the benchmark in the auto industry by skipping the gasoline engine altogether and going straight to the fully electric LEAF. Companies like Globetrotters Engineering Corporation (a Chicago based architecture company founded by Niranjan Shah known for their custom LEED solutions), Wells Fargo (which built an office tower that is not only LEED approved but saves up to 5 million kWh a year), and Kubala-Washatko Architects & Boldt Construction (which actually built the first ever LEED-platinum certified, carbon neutral building) are setting the standard for LEED design.

Since the inception of LEED certification, it took several years for the first building to reach platinum certification. Now, it is something that architects strive for. For many projects government incentives are available for businesses that reach LEED certification. Niranjan Shah realized that the LEED benchmark is the future of architecture and that creating structures that benefit from renewable energy just makes common sense. He proves that success can coincide with environmental friendliness. Hopefully, in upcoming years we’ll see LEED platinum certification become the standard.

After the oil spill in the Gulf it’s clear to see that now, more than ever, protecting our oceans stands for something much greater. By saving our oceans, we are making a commitment to the preservation of our natural resources, our wildlife, and our humanity. Through the promise and development of a sustainable, renewable energy future, we can follow a new path which will redefine the meaning of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Written by Marcus Reyes
Marcus Reyes studied public policy with a focus on energy research and environmental
sustainability. He is an advocate of clean energy technology and contributes written work to the blogosphere related to energy conservation and environmental preservation. PowerBuoy 40 – CNN Editorial Feb 26, 2010
Algae: “The ultimate in renewable energy” – CNN Tech Editorial Globetrotters Engineering Corporation Niranjan Shah – GEC CEO Niranjan Shah Twitter Feed
First LEED Platinum Certified Carbon Neutral Building Niranjan Shah – Live Journal

Nursingschools.net was kind of enough to provide me the link to one of their posts on the dangers associated with the US Oil Spill. Their post talks about the present dangers and the future problems.

Such problems are

1) Sickness among the clean-up workers
2) Danger to marine life
3) Aggravation of existing illness
4) Pregnancy risks
5) Smoke fallout
6) Neurological disorder
7) Food contamination
Oxygen depletion
9) Dispersion of oil
10) Lung disease

Read the full article at their website.