Green Options

What would have been the Southern Hemisphere’s largest wind farm, a $2 billion NZD ($1.4 billion USD) and 630 MW wind farm in New Zealand, is not happening because New Zealand’s Environment Court says that it would ruin the surrounding landscape.

This project would have powered over a million homes and made a huge dent in New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. It is not happening now because of a group of NIMBY activists and the Environment Court’s ruling.

This is a huge blow, in itself, to renewable and wind energy proponents, but it also brings concerns for future wind energy projects.

Where is the mainstream media when you need them? Probably off chasing another Micheal Jackson’s baby’s daddy. But they could do a lot more use into investigating the court case of Paice LLC vs. Toyota. In the lawsuit filed by Paice against Toyota, Paice claims that several of Toyota’s popular hybrid models infringe on patents held by Paice. Having won a similar case back in 2005, Paice is now seeking an exclusion that would keep Toyota hybrid imports from entering the U.S.

Power plants play a huge role in emitting pollutants that make up the ozone. This pollution browns and blackens our horizons. We call it smog. Smog has been linked to premature deaths, thousands of emergency room visits, and tens of thousands of asthma attacks each year. Pollution in the ozone is particularly dangerous to small children and the elderly, who are often warned to stay indoors on days with poor air quality due to pollutants.

Fishing nets often inadvertantly become entangled around whales, and while that is a crime under the Endangered Species Act, hardly anyone ever faces charges. But one unlucky fisherman has been caught in the act.

Robert J. Eldridge Jr. faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine if convicted of three felony charges.

The district attorney says he “did knowingly and unlawfully take a marine mammal, to wit, a humpback whale in waters under the jurisdiction of the United States by acts of pursuit, torment, and annoyance which had the potential to injure said marine mammal in the wild.”

Six Greenpeace climate change activists have been cleared of causing £30,000 of criminal damage at a coal-fired power station in a verdict that is expected to embarrass the government and lead to more direct action protests against energy companies. Article by John Vidal of the Guardian.

The jury of nine men and three women at Maidstone crown court cleared the six by a majority verdict. Five of the protesters had scaled a 200-metre chimney at Kingsnorth power station, Hoo, Kent, in October last year.

While I’ve noticed this phenomenon quite a few times before, yesterday’s sentencing of three Earth First! activists in Maine reminded me of the amazing backwards-notion that forcing activists into community service somehow amounts to a punishment.

Activists who engage in civil disobedience aren’t hoodlums running around the streets or menaces to society — these are people who risk arrest and jail time to make a difference in their communities. A judge need-not assign community service because it’s almost guaranteed that these people already do more than most.

In a ruling that could impact thousands of similar cases, a Florida jury has ordered Philip Morris, the largest tobacco company in the US, to pay the family of a lung cancer victim $8 million in damages.

Elaine Hess presented evidence to the jury showing that her husband Stuart had smoked three packs of cigarettes every day before dying of lung cancer at only 55. Philip Morris’ attorney argued that Hess had the free will to quit at any time, but the jury didn’t buy it.

During the eight environmentally dismal years of the Bush administration, environmental advocates learned how to effectively use the U.S. court system to aid their cause.  We saw this with a number of lawsuits including the Supreme Court’s ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Now Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and 4 cities, including my very own hometown of Santa Monica, California, have settled a suit of almost 7 years (Friends of the Earth, Inc., et al. v. Spinelli, et al.) that will force two U.S. government run financing agencies, Export-Import Bank of the United States and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, to take into account the effects of their overseas projects on climate change.

A man who stabbed an Emu to death ‘because he wanted to eat it for Christmas lunch’ has been fined almost A$4,000 (US$2,500) for animal cruelty.

An Australian court heard that, two days before Christmas, Patrick James Andrews, 23, crept into the Emu enclosure at Alexandra zoo in south-east Queensland, where he repeatedly stabbed a 30-year-old Emu named Mary, before cutting its legs off. Zoo staff later found the animal dead in its enclosure.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has imposed a record fine on a toxic ship dealer for attempting to export a ship containing deadly polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to the infamous shipbreaking beaches of South Asia.

A federal jury ruled yesterday that Chevron had done nothing wrong a decade ago when it called the Nigerian military to control protesters who had taken control of an oil platform, demanding better treatment and jobs.

In the end, the military killed two protesters. Accounts of the incident vary drastically: Chevron says the protesters were violent, armed, and had taken workers hostage, while the protesters and their lawyers claim they had been entirely peaceful and engaged in civil disobedience.