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John Muir's World: To Climb and See for Ourselves
Today is the 173rd birthday of John Muir. If the legacy of wildland preservation in this country were a river long with oxbows, falls and many notable tributaries, Muir’s contributions would certainly be the headwaters. Muir was the co-founder and first president of the Sierra Club and a steadfast advocate for the protection of wilderness.…
Read MoreEerie symmetry: Well Blowout on Anniversary of BP Spill
The symmetry is just eerie. Exactly one year after the BP disaster in the Gulf, natural gas drilling company Chesapeake admitted that a well it was hydraulically fracturing (or “fracking”) for natural gas went out of control in LeRoy, Pennsylvania late Tuesday, spilling thousands and thousands of gallons of frack fluid over containment walls, through fields,…
Read MoreCracking The Code On Spill of Fracking Fluids in Pennsylvania
As Chesapeake Energy Corp. struggles to contain a massive spill of toxic, hydraulic fluids yesterday at a natural gas fracking site in Pennsylvania, it also is struggling to explain how this dangerous event happened and how they are handling it. I mean, how do you explain away the poisoning of water supplies, waterways and farmers’ fields? Of…
Read MoreSalmon Means Jobs
President Barack Obama came to California on Wednesday on a fundraising blitz, and California’s salmon-dependent communities tried a blitz of their own to turn his attention towards protecting the Sacramento River king salmon run. San Francisco Bay Area commercial and sportfishing groups, restaurants and seafood distributors published a half page ad in the San Francisco…
Read MoreThreats of High-Risk Drilling Remain Year After Gulf Oil Spill
One year ago, the BP oil spill had just started turning the Gulf of Mexico’s blue waters to the color of rust. Triggered on April 20, 2010 by a well-rig explosion that killed 11 people, the spill would gush more than 200 million gallons of crude oil—the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Before the…
Read MoreDealing With Consequences of Gulf Oil Spill A Year Later
Earthjustice continues to be engaged with the consequences of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a year after it occurred: On Tuesday (April 26), our attorneys will be in oral arguments in the 5th District Federal Court, New Orleans, in our legal challenges to five new deepwater exploration permits, and one shallow…
Read MoreGulf Oil Spill Sticking Around A Year Later
A year after BP’s oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, we are analyzing the cleanup efforts and, sadly, find them both paltry and embarrassing. The U.S. Coast Guard has issued an unbelievably bogus report that says that no further remedial action is needed to clean up BP’s massive mess. Huh? The tourist boosters don’t…
Read MoreSaving Our Wild Places: Conservation Activist Gene Sentz
(This is the third in a series of Q & A’s on the Crown of the Continent, a 10-million acre expanse of land in northern Montana and southern Canada. Gene Sentz is co-founder of the Friends of the Rocky Mountain Front, one of the organizations whose activism resulted in the banning of oil and gas…
Read MoreDeath to Trees! And Elk! And Bald Eagles!
How should America’s 190 million acres of national forest be managed? Nine Republican congressmen, led by Rep. Stevan Pearce of New Mexico, have the answer in a bill introduced last month: Forests are for logging. And to hell with everything else. The bill, H.R. 1202, is short and not-so-sweet. The meat of the bill is a single sentence: …
Read MoreThe Dark Side of the Boom
This week, in connection with the launch of our campaign Fracking Gone Wrong: Finding a Better Way, we’ve invited some of the movement’s most prominent advocates to guest blog. Today's guest blogger is Sharon Wilson, aka TXsharon, a blogger and an organizer with Texas Oil and Gas Accountability Project. Earthjustice has worked for years alongside EARTHWORKS OGAP in Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania and other drilling states.
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