Uranium – the Navajo’s accursed yellow powder
The Curse of the Yellow Powder, Bacon’s Rebellion, by Rose Jenkins December 2, 2012 Is it possible to restore a landscape damaged by uranium? Ask the Navajo in New Mexico. “………. a Navajo legend.
The story goes that when the People were entering this world, they had a choice between two yellow powders. One was life-giving corn pollen; the other, in the legend, is unspecified. Shuey said, “They could choose the way of the corn pollen, which is balance and harmony, or they could choose the way of this other yellow stuff, which is the way of disharmony, imbalance, and upsetting.” Uranium, which is ground into a yellow powder, acts that way, he said.
“When you take this stuff out of its resting place, it moves easily in the environment, especially in water, and you can’t put it back in the earth,” he said. “Now… even if it’s managed in some state-of-the-art facility, it’s still got to be managed. Anything in the nuclear fuel cycle has to be managed because it’s full of impact. Setting aside all of the risks — all of the health risks, all of the environmental risks — that management requires societal dedication, including financial resources. And it will never be put back.” http://www.baconsrebellion.com/2012/12/the-curse-of-the-yellow-powder.html
Victoria’s planning adviser calls for discouraging huge houses – “Mc Mansions”
Row over McMansions divides Baillieu Government and its planning adviser, John Masanauskas Herald Sun November 28 A ROW over so-called McMansions on the city fringe has revealed a split between the Baillieu Government and its chief planning adviser.
Professor Roz Hansen, chair of the ministerial advisory committee for the Metropolitan Planning Strategy, has called for a campaign to discourage families from building huge homes in new estates. (subscribers only)
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/row-over-mcmansions-divides-baillieu-government-and-its-planning-adviser/story-e6frf7kx-1226525259254
Doha Climate Talks – Australia, Qatar, and developed world – out of touch with reality
Doha Dispatches: Mind the gap… and the science REneweconomy, By Giles Parkinson 3 December 2012 DOHA: The first slogan to greet arrivals at Doha Airport in Qatar are as optimistic as those that greeted delegates to the climate change talks in Copenhagen in 2009: “Welcome to 12 days that could have an everlasting effect,” it pronounces.
Not real catchy, and possibly a direct translation from Arabic. But worthy all the same. Sadly, judging by the lack of ambition, and the lack of progress of these talks, it’s not a likely outcome.
The second thing that attracted my attention on arrival were two payment booths at the exit of the parking lot. Barely big enough for one person to sit inside, they were each equipped with their own 1kW air conditioning system with a large hose attached, like a deep-sea diver with an oxygen supply.
They probably need it. Doha is a city that thrives because of its fossil fuel riches and it has built a western city of stunning shapes and proportions only because it is air conditioned. It has even promised to air condition the World Cup, which it aims to host in 2022 and will have to do exactly that if the competition is to run in the northern summer, where temperatures average 36°C from June to August and have peaked at 53°C, and could hit goodness-knows-what in a decade’s time. (Even the sea-water reached 37°C in 2008).
Qatar is one of a handful of Gulf states that deprives Australia of a most unwanted moniker – the highest emitting state in the world per capita. Australia gets the gong for the category of developed nations, but even it can’t compete with Qatar. Humankind would need more than two planets if the world lived like Australians do. If they lived like the Qataris – the massive buildings, the labyrinth of four lane highways that seem always often clogged, what must be the highest per capita penetration of Toyota Land Cruisers, and its need to desalinate its water – then we would need around five planets. Continue reading
Australia under pressure from USA in Trans Pacific Partnership talks
Such a clause would allow companies who believed an Australian law had harmed their ability to invest in Australia to take their dispute to an extranational body with the power to overrule local laws.
Philip Morris International is trying to use such a clause in the Australia-Hong Kong investment treaty to declare invalid the plain cigarette packaging law that came into force on December 1.
Free trade talks to avoid legal hurdle http://www.theage.com.au/business/free-trade-talks-to-avoid-legal-hurdle-20121202-2aoyt.html#ixzz2E26mKulE December 3, 2012 Peter Martin NEGOTIATIONS over what’s set to be the world’s biggest free trade agreement resume in Auckland this week, with the Australian government insisting the contentious proposal for foreign companies to sue governments will stay off the table.
But non-government observers say aspects of the proposed powers are likely to be incorporated in the words of the agreement to be refined by officials.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership will encompass 11 states from all edges of the Pacific – Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam – with Japan considering joining at a later stage.
The Australian government has said it will not be party to the agreement if it includes a so-called investor-state disputes
settlement clause, something insisted on by the US and obtained in each one of its free trade agreements apart from the one with Australia. Continue reading
Effect of uranium mining on Navajo people
what I saw in Navajo country made me wonder how much you can really clean up after uranium, if contaminants get into the soil, the water, the air, the plants, the animals
The Curse of the Yellow Powder, Bacon’s Rebellion, b
y Rose Jenkins December 2, 2012 Is it possible to restore a landscape damaged by uranium? Ask the Navajo in New Mexico. This fall, near Teddy Nez’s house on the Navajo reservation near Gallup, N.M., men in earth-moving equipment were scraping away the topsoil, up to three feet deep, which had been contaminated by radioactivity from abandoned uranium mines. In earlier phases of this project, starting in 2007, crews had torn out 100-year-old junipers and piñon pines and had clawed earth away from the remaining trees, which weakened them, even after replacement soil was trucked in. The machines had flayed hillsides, whose cover of flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs has yet to grow back. “It looks like a B-52 hit it,” Nez told me, recalling an image from his service in Vietnam.
On our way to his house, Nez pointed out a notch in a bank of yellow grassland at the head of an arroyo. That’s where the Church Rock uranium mill tailings dam broke in 1979, releasing over 1,000 tons of radioactive wastes and millions of gallons of highly acidic water into the Puerco River, an intermittent stream that flows toward the Colorado River. The Church Rock dam failure was the largest radioactive release in U.S. history, by volume — larger than the Three Mile Island disaster the same year. Continue reading
Indigenous people speak out on Cameco, Areva’s plan to gag criticism of uranium mining
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Saskatchewan/ID/2310512792/ Committee for Future Generations on Pinehouse 2 Dec 12, Two Pinehouse residents are campaigning against further nuclear development in the area.
This is happening in Canada. Far from the extractive industries in emerging nations but in a “developed country” and on Aboriginal land and with Indigenous people. You will recognize the names of the same players.
The public is being alerted to a plan for a “Collaboration Agreement” between uranium giants Cameco & Areva and the community of Pinehouse in Northern Saskatchewan Although this agreement is being presented as an opportunity for Pinehouse to receive resources for investments in Community Investment, Workforce Development, Business Development and Community Engagement and Environmental Stewardship, it represents an exchange of money from the nuclear industry to Pinehouse with a promise from the community that its members will stop speaking out against current, proposed or future uranium mining projects in the area. Critics are calling this a gag order.
New Podcast website – Welcome to the Dreaming
Welcome to the Dreaming, By cameron September 26, 2012 http://thedreamingpodcast.com.au/ the Deaming Podcast Whether you are black or white, knowledgeable or ignorant, one thing we can probably all agree on is that Australia’s handling of our indigenous population – historical and contemporary – is a mess.
The Dreaming is a new weekly podcast series hosted by a white fella (Cameron Reilly) and a black fella (David Cole) that will discuss the mess.
As David says, this isn’t about guilt, shame or blame – it is about making sure we make things better on our watch.
This show is going to attempt to provide an ongoing conversation about indigenous Australians. Over the course of the show, we will have conversations with historians, anthropologists, journalists, politicians, academics, authors, and every day Aussies of all colours.
Greenhouse gases leading to an untenable future for the planet
“Unless the negotiators in Doha wake up tomorrow and embrace a new green industrial revolution to rapidly change our energy systems, chances to stay below global warming of 2 degrees Celsius are vanishing very fast, if they are not already gone.”
The greenhouse gas emissions path the world is taking “is not a tenable future for the planet – we cannot be that stupid as a species,”
(Diagram below is now out of date – predictions are worse!)
It’s the end of the world as we know it http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-20121202-2ap4l.html#ixzz2E25ixNBg December 3, 2012 Ben Cubby THE world is on track to see “an unrecognisable planet” that is between 4 and 6 degrees hotter by the end of this century, according to new data on greenhouse gas emissions.
As United Nations climate negotiations enter their second week in Doha, Qatar, an Australian-based international research effort that tracks greenhouse gas output will release its annual findings on Monday, showing emissions climbing too quickly to stave off the effects of dangerous climate change.
The new forecast does not include recent revelations about the effects of thawing permafrost, which is starting to release large amounts of methane from the Arctic. This process makes cutting human emissions of fossil fuels even more urgent, scientists say.
The new data from the Global Carbon Project found greenhouse gas emissions are expected to have risen 2.6 per cent by the end of this year, on top of a 3 per cent rise in 2011. Since 1990, the reference year for the Kyoto Protocol, emissions have increased 54 per cent.
Uranium companies make a deal to censor indigenous people
The agreement would prohibit Pinehouse from criticizing the companies now or in the future, a measure that amounts to an indefinite “gag order”
- Pinehouse promises to “fully support” Cameco and Areva’s current, proposed and future projects in public, to investors, to regulators and with other groups. Pine-house leaders must make reasonable efforts to ensure community members “do not say or do anything that interferes with or delays” the companies’ operations.
- Pinehouse agrees to not make any future financial requests or claims against the companies.
Uranium firms offer deal to Sask. community Agreement sparks opposition By Jason Warick, The StarPhoenix November 27, 2012 An offer by uranium giants Cameco Corp. and Areva could soon deliver jobs, cash payments and other benefits to the northern community of Pinehouse, but some residents worry it’s a thinly veiled attempt to buy their silence. Continue reading
Australia in desperate need of a culture of belonging to nature
Nature and Culture in Australia, Bonzer, by Paul Newbury, Dec 12, In the colonisation of Australia by the British, the connection between Indigenous people and their land was severed and the land bears the scars of their dispossession. In the Indigenous worldview, land has spiritual meaning; nature and culture are inseparable; and the health of the natural environment and that of its people are intimately connected—our wellbeing is influenced by the degree in
which we are actively involved in caring for the earth.
This is a conceptual framework that can promote holistic responses to climate change and other environmental challenges. British settler invaders brought the western concept of ‘taming nature’ with them and it is now embedded in Australian culture. The following are imperatives that arise from differences in perception between western culture and Australia’s Indigenous peoples.
1 Relationship with the environment: We need to develop a set of values – an ethical basis for relating to the natural world that inspires the nation to develop a sustainable economy and way of life.
Over eons the Indigenous peoples of this land attained a heightened eco-consciousness through developing relationships with plant and animal species in totemic systems.
2 Human habitat: the survival of our species depends on an acknowledgement that an organism cannot be known separate to its natural environment. Continue reading
Global warming by 5 C by the end of the century – will wreak planetary havoc
Chronic droughts and floods would bite into farm yields, violent storms and sea-level rise would swamp coastal cities and deltas, and many species would be wiped out, unable to cope with habitat loss.
Climate study predicts 5C warming http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/climate-study-sees-5c-warming/story-e6frf7k6-1226528644170 AAP December 03, LEVELS of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) are rising annually by around three per cent, placing Earth on track for warming that could breach 5C by 2100, a new study published says.
The figure – among the most alarming of the latest forecasts by climate scientists – is at least double the 2C target set by UN
members struggling for a global deal on climate change.
In 2011, global carbon emissions were 54 per cent above 1990 levels, according to the research, published in the journal, Nature Climate Change, by the Global Carbon Project consortium.
“We are on track for the highest emissions projections, which point to a rise in temperature of between 4C and 6C by the end of the century,” said Corinne le Quere, a carbon specialist at the University of East Anglia, eastern England. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 