Green Options

Is the U.S. Interior Department wrongly withholding information that will reveal whether taxpayers are being ripped off in a controversial oil and gas royalty program? Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) see to think so, according to a lawsuit they filed today. Interior claims that disclosure of bidding and contracting information about its Royalty-In-Kind (RIK) sales would reveal oil company trade secrets.

An ocean acidification lawsuit filed Thursday in the state of Washington is the first of its kind.

The Waxman-Markey bill that recently was introduced into the House has already caused quit a stir, and that was before someone found a provision tucked in it’s 600 plus pages that would make it legal to sue the Government if you suffer from Global Warming.

Drug company giant Pfizer has agreed to settle out of court - to the tune of $75 million - in the case of its unlicensed medical trials on Nigerian children during a meningitis outbreak in 1996, which led to 11 deaths and serious injuries such as organ failure and brain damage in others.

The Nigerian Health Ministry called the experiment “an illegal trial of an unregistered drug” and a “clear case of exploitation of the ignorant.”

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.

The Center for Biological Diversity has won a lawsuit against the US Department of the Interior to force the government to consider listing the American pika as threatened or endangered.

The tiny rabbit-like rodent has been in steep decline in recent years, which many blame on climate change. The animal has thick fur and can’t survive in temperatures higher than 80 degrees.

A class action lawsuit seeking $200 million was filed against the Washington D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) by the single father of twin boys who were poisoned as infants by lead contaminated tap water. John Parkhurst filed the suit on behalf of himself and other parents in D.C. whose children were poisoned due to extremely high levels of lead in the municipal water supply from 2001 to 2004.

“In June 2001, WASA discovered that that toxic levels of lead were leaching into the District’s drinking water. Not only did the Authority fail to eliminate this danger, it actually took affirmative steps to hide the lead contamination from its customers and federal authorities. At the same time, WASA encouraged the public to consume this dangerous product. As a result, tens of thousands of children and pregnant mothers faced elevated risks for years longer than they should have. WASA’s actions endangered thousands of children living in the District between 2001 and 2004, many of whom, like Jonathan and Joshua Parkhurst, are now profoundly affected by their ingestion of this highly poisonous element.” - Stefanie Roemer, Sanford Wittels & Heisler.

The legal fight over accountability for a day-care center housed in a former mercury thermometer factory continues in New Jersey, with plenty of buck-passing and legal maneuvering by the owner of the property.

The real estate broker, Jim Sullivan III, who bought the contaminated building and later rented it out as a day-care center says that he did not believe a cleanup was necessary. He also never informed the operators of the day care of its history.

Convenient for him, huh?

The Coca-Cola Company has been served notice of a class action lawsuit filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) over the deceptive and unsubstantiated claims on its VitaminWater line of beverages.

“Coke fears, probably correctly, that they’ll sell less soda as Americans become increasingly concerned with obesity, diabetes, and other conditions linked to diets too high in sugar. VitaminWater is Coke’s attempt to dress up soda in a physician’s white coat. Underneath, it’s still sugar water, albeit sugar water that costs about ten bucks a gallon.” - Steve Gardner, CSPI litigation director

A suit filed today in a D.C. federal court charges six federal agencies with refusing to establish national regulations that will speed up the recovery of endangered species and take global warming into account in decision-making processes.

“Global warming is the fastest-growing threat to endangered species. It is pushing hundreds of species, including the polar bear, walrus, black abalone, elkhorn coral, staghorn coral, American pika, Sonoran pronghorn, woodland caribou, and wolverine to extinction.” - Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity.

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.