SOCIAL: oil spills NIMBY

[Geoff Davis]

Yeah, I heard something on NPR about a huge oil spill near Kuwait that
happened during the second Gulf War.  The good news is that the marine life
(or at least the commercially important stuff) bounced back after a few
years.  Not sure I'd want to eat any of it, though.


On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 10:21 AM, adee . <adee21 at gmail.com> wrote:

> *this email from a friend & in response to an email from another friend
> about an article in yesterday's SFGate. *
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Cindy
> Date: Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 9:51 AM
> Subject: Re: [All] Behold the Magnificent Horror
> To:
>
>
> I can't help but point out that as much oil as is being spilled in the Gulf
> is spilled *every year* in Nigeria with no real efforts at cleanup or
> control. Obviously Soupsters know that this is an issue close to my heart.
>
> This oil spill is the worst in US history, but it's not even close to the
> worst in the world.  And we need to be careful that in our understandable
> upset about this at home we don't increase the risk to people around the
> world -- that this doesn't result in increased and dangerous drilling
> overseas so that Americans just don't see the devastation so close up.
>
> Two good articles:
>
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
>
> "One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and
> representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian
> Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5m tons of oil – 50
> times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska
> – has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year
> Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil was
> spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage."
>
>
> And a quote from my friend Nnimmo Bassey:
>
> "We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US," said Nnimo
> Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International. "But in
> Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and
> destroy people's livelihood and environments."
>
>
>
>
> http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/nigerian-oil-spills-make-exxon-valdez-look-like-drop-in-the-bucket/19483921
>
> " The Associated Press reported that Shell alone spilled nearly 4.5 million
> gallons of oil into the Niger Delta last year."
>
> And
>
> Writing in a New York Times op-ed<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/opinion/02margonelli.html>,
> New America Foundation scholar Lisa Margonelli noted: "All oil comes from
> someone's backyard, and when we don't reduce the amount of oil we consume,
> and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to drill for us in
> Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria -- places without America's strong
> environmental safeguards or the resources to enforce them."
>
> Ahoy,
>
> Cindy
>
> On Jun 5, 2010, at 9:07 AM, Maura F wrote:
>
>
> A perspective I admire...
>
>
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fg%2Fa%2F2010%2F06%2F04%2Fnotes060410.DTL
>
> ~Maura
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ********************************************************
>
> Cindy Cohn   ---- Cindy at eff.org
>
> Legal Director   ---- www.eff.org
>
> Electronic Frontier Foundation
>
> 454 Shotwell Street
>
> San Francisco, CA 94110
>
> (415) 436-9333 x108
>
> (415) 436-9993 (fax)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Social mailing list
> Social at lists.deeptrouble.com
> http://lists.deeptrouble.com/listinfo.cgi/social-deeptrouble.com
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.deeptrouble.com/pipermail/social-deeptrouble.com/attachments/20100605/ad285c27/attachment-0002.htm>