Truck driver busted with stolen glacier - denialism & jokes ensue

So, Chilean police have arrested a truck driver with 5 tonnes of "endangered" glacier ice.

My first thoughts were of the tragic irony: poor people worsening an environmental catastrophe (glacier degradation) probably to mitigate its effects (droughts) in what affordable way they could conceive (theft in response to water supply being privatized). Then the denial forecast kicked in: Climate change "skeptics" will now be wittily and/or insanely claiming glaciers aren't melting, they are getting stolen. Al Gore probably the kingpin of the glacier mafia.

Most news reports have been aiming for cheap jokes so far:

• MSNBC / Glacier theft suspects on thin ice with Chilean police
• RT / On the rocks behind the bars
• The Guardian / Glacier thief arrested in Chile
  "Sceptics have cited other explanations [than global warming] for retreating glaciers, but theft – until now – was not one of them. It may be the only case in which both sides agree human activity was to blame."

Ha, ha. For a short, factual article with pictures of the actual loot see The Telegraph / Police investigate glaciar theft. It appears to be speculation, but several articles report a plot to sell the 1000+ years old ice for fancy drinks. What is certain is now the ice will be used to mitigate drought stricken farms.

---

Guardian News / Network Rail losing millions from copper thefts

The theft of copper cables from Britain's railways is reaching epidemic proportions, costing the operator Network Rail millions of pounds as it takes on extra staff to catch the criminals and pays out compensation to train companies for delays on the system. Copper theft from railway lines jumped by 67% to 3,116 incidents in the year to April as metal prices have soared and Britain's stumbling recovery from recession has continued to push impoverished groups into crime, according to the British Transport Police. [...] The damage is also taking a financial toll, costing Network Rail £43m in compensation and repair charges in the past three years, as thousands of incidents led to nearly 1m minutes of delays. [...] Economic hardship has been blamed for the rise in thefts but the soaring price of copper has made it more lucrative. Copper has tripled to about $9,000 (£5,486) a tonne in under three years as fast-growing emerging markets such as China demand more of the metal, which is used in wiring, to feed its construction boom. [...] The number of copper thefts is closely aligned to the price of the metal, meaning that an increase in speculation by pension funds and other investors at one end is likely to filter through to an increase in train service disruptions at the other.

"[It] can only get worse. If someone is desperate and determined they will find a way. [...] Copper [prices are] likely to keep rising and the austerity measures aren't helping."
- Steve White, Network Rail engineer

I have been reading near-identical stories in Danish media about the Danish railways.

Polly Higgins: Ban 'ecocide' - crimes against nature and peace

Catching up on emails marked 'to do' today I realized I really needed to take a look at the work of one Polly Higgins, barrister, author and activist. Just peek at her website: THIS IS ECOCIDE. Looks like I have another book to read but for now here's (some of?) her YouTube videos:




















Polly Higgins wrote a guest article at TreeHugger: COP16: Cancun - Corporate and Complicit and The Ecologist helped her kick-start her campaign earlier 2010: Ecocide: making environmental destruction a criminal offence.

Ecocide she defines as "the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished" - which initially looks like just a call for tighter pollution control and doesn't connect to conflict. But throughout the videos above that link is mentioned several times.

Examples of ecocide are cases such as the destruction from tar sands oil extraction, Amazonian logging, oceanic plastic pollution, damage from oil extraction in the Niger Delta, the Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah which Higgins claims "account for the death of more people than all forms of violence including war". A fifth chapter could be added to the Crimes Against Peace currently handled by The International Criminal Court (ICC) right after Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and Crimes of Aggression: Ecocide.



To follow: Ecocide is a crime' on Facebook | Polly Higgins on Twitter.

The Growing Problem Of Oil Theft In China

China may be leaking more oil and gas from its pipeline network than any country in the world, much of it because of criminal activity.

the biggest and least-known problem is oil pilferage by thieves who drill into oil pipelines. This is the cause of at least 40 percent of China’s oil pipeline leaks. This criminal activity started in the early 1990s and it has never stopped since. Although alarm systems are installed along the pipelines, men have to be used to prevent oil theft.

Oil theft from pipelines has become so widespread that even undersea pipelines are being attacked. In 2006, both oil and gas pipelines at the bottom of the sea in the Shengli oilfield were drilled and 70 barrels of crude oil were stolen. But much more oil was spilled and that leak caused serious pollution in the area. The government came down hard on the perpetrators and two were executed. The Shengli oilfield had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to fix the damaged pipelines, clean the seawater pollution and compensate local farmers.

Sometimes local police and security personnel side with the oil stealing criminals or even become their accomplices.

the rewards are too great for criminals to quit, even at the risk of the death penalty.

Does poor health cause crime?

Just found The New York Times / For Crime, Is Anatomy Destiny? via Hunter-Gatherer / Does poor health cause crime?

The blog looks like something for the watchlist (John Durant, did you read some Kim Stanley Robinson?) and the article is very interesting. Some highlights:

shorter men are 20 to 30 percent more likely to end up in prison than their taller counterparts

[...]

both men and women who were rated unattractive (as rated on a five-point scale) in high school were more likely to commit — or at least more likely to be caught while committing — one of seven crimes, including burglary and selling drugs, than those rated average or attractive.

[...]

Public health policies successful at reducing obesity among individuals in the population will not only make society healthier, but also safer.

Read the whole thing for the links between attractiveness and health, income and crime. Good find, hunter-gatherer-blogger John Durant. Now, here are two links from my to-blog list that are a bit related:

Los Angeles Times / Hunger breeds violence

hunger and conflict go hand in hand. Millions of people in poor countries suffer the burden. In 2008, protests over high food prices swept the globe

[...]

Empty stomachs breed panic and desperation, while extremist groups
[...] use food to advance their violent missions while undercutting security.

[...]

A crucial element to fighting conflict in poor countries is to ensure adequate food, proper nutrition and access to education. School meals programs promote education and nutrition by giving hungry schoolchildren at least one meal a day. Once children start eating a healthy meal, schools report remarkable increases in enrollment, attendance and academic performance, and they are less vulnerable to recruitment by rebel forces.

[...]

Ensuring that no child goes to school hungry is the single greatest investment we can make in building prosperous, healthy and stable societies.

Granted, that was a different perspective. Here is a third:

The New York Times / Therapists Report Increase in Green Disputes

As awareness of environmental concerns has grown, therapists say they are seeing a rise in bickering between couples and family members over the extent to which they should change their lives to save the planet.

In households across the country, green lines are being drawn between those who insist on wild salmon and those who buy farmed, those who calculate their carbon footprint and those who remain indifferent to greenhouse gases.

The link between poverty, health, pollution and conflicts was also something I blogged about for the year 2008 Blog Action Day: Pollution, poverty, war, lights, camera... action!

Nuclear waste dumped in Mediterranean

They have somehow maintained a romantic image while running a business of world wide drug distribution, assassinations and assorted corruption. But no description is too demeaning for the latest crime committed by the Italian mafia.

Francesco Fonti, a former member of the Calabrian Mafia, has told of sinking ships loaded with radioactive and otherwise dangerous waste in the Mediterranean Sea. They thereby solved one of the biggest problems of the nuclear industry - getting rid of the waste - and made loads of money while doing it for about 20 years.

Italian authorities have now found and even filmed such a wreck with yellow barrels labeled for toxic content inside it. The full extent of the unspeakable environmental crime is still to be investigated.


The view is nice. But what is below the surface? Photo: Grace and Godbeams by Daveness_98, Creative Commons license.

Sources: BBC / Mafia 'sank ships of toxic waste' (with video), Reuters / Italy finds wreck of toxic waste ship sunk by mafia, Al Jazeera / Italian mafia 'sunk toxic waste', AP / Robot sub hunts toxic waste off Italian coast.

Trouble brewing in dried-out India

Years of excessive use of water for irrigating fields, a drying trend from global warming, a record drought and astronomical scale pollution all adds up to trouble in India.

Harvests go down, farmer income the same direction, malnourishment and desperation up. So much according to The Star / India: Dying of thirst a family was murdered in a riot over water. (We need a -cide word somewhere between homi- and geno- for this!)

"We are running out of it, and crops are going to slow. We will see more hunger, more disputes and clashes. More theft."
- Naranjan Singh, a 63-year-old farmer

"In a decade, India could look like Darfur. You have people running out of water, and it's a recipe for killing. It really does make people desperate. You go without it for just three days and you've had it."
- Vandana Shiva, nuclear physicist and water activist

"Climate change is threatening our ecosystems, water scarcity is becoming a way of life and pollution is a growing threat to our health and habitat."
- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

Over-use of water is a problem that has created as the so-called "Green Revolution" of decades past sought to address other issues. Human caused depletion was confirmed by NASA satellites last month. (Source: NASA data shows groundwater trouble)

Stealing sun and water

News in crime: theft of solar panels and fresh water is up.

March 2008 we saw people stealing bees, essentially a work force in horticulture up in demand and down in availability due to diseases. Lately I have seen stories about people stealing water and solar panels.

In fact, Treehuger / Solar Panel Theft is Rampant in California Wineries links to older stories about the trend and has tips on securing your panels! In New Mexico police busted a couple of criminals who seemed to have specialized in solar panel theft and dealing (see Solar panel theft ring busted in Farmington). Energy prices are up, solar panels are expensive, in demand and out there often not being watched and relatively easy to run off with.

Then there is water. Most obviously in need in poor, drought stricken areas, right. Like Kenya where a crime syndicate is diverting half the capitals water for farm irrigation. In the city water is now rationed and feared a possible source of disease. (See BBC / Nairobi water 'stolen for farms'.) But the truth is we need not go to the "third world" to see crime erupt over resources. As prices go up so does the incentive to "bend rules" a bit it seems. I'm sure this example of corruption - city workers tampering with water bills - is far from the first, the only or the last we'll see.

Europe illegally dumps toxic, nuclear waste in Somali waters

Just discovered an angle to the Somali fishing-oil-piracy trouble that I somehow entirely missed: Dumped toxic waste!

"[Our motive is] to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas."
- Sugule Ali, Somali pirate

So, on top of the Somali fishermen being robbed by Western colleagues they are dying from mysterious diseases as all sorts of toxic waste - including nuclear - washes up shore. It became too apparent to ignore as the Tsunami speeded up and aggravated the situation and about 300 died. Some waste has been traced to European industries who have paid the Italian Mafia to dispose of it.

"There's uranium radioactive waste, there's leads, there's heavy metals like cadmium and mercury, there's industrial wastes, and there's hospital wastes, chemical wastes, you name it [...] These problems range from acute respiratory infections to dry, heavy coughing, mouth bleedings, abdominal hemorrhages, what they described as unusual skin chemical reactions."
- Nick Nuttall, UNEP

• You are being lied to about pirates, by Johann Hari, February 2009.
• UN: Nuclear Waste Being Released on Somalia's Shores After Tsunami, February 2005.
  

VIDEO: Bee Theft on Rise

As honeybees become scarce in the United States and farmers have to hire beekeepers to import bees to their orchards and farms, theft of the beehives is stinging everyone involved.

(Headline links to 3 min video.)

Correlations from weather to sociology

The past

It turns out that [19th century] Bavaria kept remarkably comprehensive crime statistics - the most meticulous in Germany - and when laid out one on top of the other, there was a startlingly robust correlation between the amount of rain, the price of rye and the rate of property crime: they rose and fell together in lockstep.

[...] rainfall often has a surprisingly strong effect on violence

[...] The causes of any war are incredibly complex - or are they? The economists found that one of the most reliable predictors of civil war [in Africa during the 1980s or 1990s] is lack of rain.

The future

[...] the predicted rise in temperature will increase the death rate for American men by 1.7 percent and for women by 0.4 percent.

[...] global warming would produce a net agricultural gain in the US, [some] states would be the big winners and [some] would be the big losers.

Source: Global warming could bring us together - By Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt