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)

Another MUST SEE: Crude - The Real Price of Oil

Just saw HOME, still planning to see DIRT and now this, CRUDE. (Haven't these people heard of lower case letters?) Another 2009 film about environmental exploitation and the hidden costs of it; mostly poor and/or indigenous people abused by Western companies and consumers.



More at the official website, IMDb, Hollywood and Fine / Crude: The cost of social Darwinism, ifc.com / Joe Berlinger's Crude New Film. From the reviews:

Crude [...] will be in the thick of the Oscar fight.

a heartbreaking and compellingly multifaceted epic about the so-called "Amazon Chernobyl" case

Part of this story was also told in an episode of the tv series Extreme Oil [IMDb].

China: Thousands riot over sewage pollution

That Chinese economic development is taking place more rapidly than environmental protection is no secret. Air pollution in larger cites have been among the worst in the world for years.

But a sewage leak was what finally sparked unrest in one town where for at least two years insufficient industrial water treatment has darkened river water and probably caused otherwise inexplicable cancer cases. Somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 protesters clashed with 2,000 riot police leaving 10 injured and some property damage.

"The stench is awful. Nobody wants to buy our fish. We can't earn money. The fishing boats have been abandoned on the shore."
- Liu, local.

"Environmental quality is not satisfactory and environmental protection work is arduous."
- Zhou Shengxian, Environmental protection minister

Sources: New Tang Dynasty Television / 10,000 Clash with Police Over Sewage Pollution (with video), Guardian / Further anti-pollution riots break out in China, Telegraph / China riot: 10,000 villagers clash with police over industrial pollution
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John Kerry: Climate change to cause conflict; how come deniers can stay in politics?

In a late evening soon to end brief spell of energetic RSS-feed checking ending a day of trying to sleep away a flu attack I find We Can't Ignore the Security Threat from Climate Change by John Kerry, US Senator, is a kind of follow-up and sum-up to the articles I posted Sunday, August 02, 2009: US Senators, military join chorus: Climate change is a security threat that leaves little to be misunderstood.

Make no mistake: catastrophic climate change represents a threat to human security, global stability, and -- yes -- even to American national security.

Climate change injects a major new source of chaos, tension, and human insecurity into an already volatile world. It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity, and human displacement on a staggering scale. We risk fanning the flames of failed-statism, and offering glaring opportunities to the worst actors in our international system. In an interconnected world, that endangers all of us.

[...]

We don't know with certainty whether climate change pushed Darfur over the edge, but we do know that it will cause more tension just like we've seen in Darfur.

Once you accept the science, it's clear that such massive environmental change will create dislocation, destruction, chaos, and conflict.

[...]

Nowhere is the connection between climate and security more direct than in South Asia -- home to al Qaeda. Scientists now warn that the Himalayan glaciers which supply fresh water to a billion people in the region could disappear completely by 2035. Think about what this means: Water from the Himalayans flows through India and Pakistan. India's rivers are not only vital to its agriculture but are also critical to its religious practice. Pakistan, for its part, is heavily dependent on irrigated farming to avoid famine.

At a moment when the U.S. government is scrambling to ratchet down tensions and preparing to invest billions of dollars to strengthen Pakistan's capacity to deliver for its people -- climate change could work so powerfully in the opposite direction.

Notice that I am adding the bold formatting to selected text. I chose what to quote here. This is not because I think those issues are the most important and pressing issues in the world. But they certainly are important and not least extremely underexposed by media. Plus it's simply the topic of this particular blog to highlight conflict-nature links. But I don't wish to put any judgement on what is more catastrophic: never ending civil war, mass extinctions, cataclysmic floodings or what ever else we'll see. Anyway, here's Kerrys best or most unique observation:

Unfortunately, not everyone in Washington appreciates the stakes. It's tragic that we live at a time when if one were to dismiss the threat of terrorism, you'd be sent home in the next election. But there are no similar political consequences if you dismiss the science or the threat of climate change.

Indeed, Kerry. We seem to have a major political dichotomy at our hands here.

Do yourself a favour and read the whole thing at Huffington Post.