Now that the polar bear is about to receive over 128 million acres of critical habitat designation, the state of Alaska is taking legal action to challenge the decision.

Following the announcement that threatened polar bears are set to receive over 128 million acres of critical habitat designation, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell and Attorney General Dan Sullivan responded by taking legal action against federal protection of polar bears.

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Just a few minutes ago I received this rather nonchalant tweet from one of the movie’s Swedish creators, Fredrik Gertten: http://bit.ly/IoQ96 DOLE dismissing the BANANAS!* law suit it seems.

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One of only three wolf pairs in Oregon was killed by U.S.D.A. Wildlife Services with approval from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The Center for Biological Diversity announced today that Oregon’s wolf recovery program suffered a serious setback when a pair of wolves residing in the Eagle Cap Wilderness in eastern Oregon were killed over the weekend by wildlife authorities.

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The Dole Food Company is now attempting to sue the filmmakers and producers, and has unsuccessfully attempted to block screenings of the movie at the Los Angeles Film Festival earlier this year. WG Film, Fredrik Gertten and Margarete Jangård, the creators of Bananas!*, have retained a First Amendment rights lawyer to fight back against the multinational giant Dole. The corporation’s lawsuit claims that the film is defamatory and false toward Dole Food. Bananas!* is definitely a movie that the Dole Corporation does not want you to see. It is presently scheduled for wide release this October.

A luxury-home subdivision in the heart of designated California Condor habitat?

That’s exactly what Tejon Ranch Company (TRC) has in mind.

In fact, Tejon Ranch Company (TRC) has had it in for the California Condors since at least 1997. That’s when they sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to prevent the reintroduction of the species into Southern California.

Why would TRC be opposed to the reintroduction of California Condors?

Because TRC would be prevented from developing any land that is designated California Condor habitat. And if a publicly traded real estate development company can’t develop real estate …. well, then they can’t make a profit.

In fact, TRC has gone to tremendous lengths to push their development deal through. Under the cloak of a “habitat conservation plan” - to mitigate “incidental take” of threatened or endangered species - they even finagled the support of major environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club.

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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) seem 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.

The Royalty-In-Kind Program is responsible for managing Minerals Revenue Management’s (MRM) commercial oil and gas sales activity. The RIK Program is currently selling over 800,000 MM-Btu of natural gas per day and over 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

Simply put, Interior acts as an oil broker, selling this oil and gas in order to obtain its shares. Royalty payments on oil and gas from offshore tracts and public lands are one of the federal government’s greatest sources of non-tax revenues, making over $4 billion in 2007. RIK allows companies to pay federal royalties in the form of oil or natural gas rather than cash.

An investigation last September found that Interior employees (19 RIK marketers and other RIK employees - approximately 1/3 of the entire RIK staff) were engaging in sex and drug parties with oil officials, and 8 of the 19 employees received gifts exceeding the allowable limit.

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It’s also important because it deals with the naming of carbon dioxide as a pollutant - something currently being contested by a “smoking gun” White House memo. The lawsuit has been brought up under the Clean Water Act, which regulates pollutants in water. From how I see it, this means that if EPA is found to be in the wrong under the Clean Water Act here, then CO2 will have been legally deemed a pollutant.

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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.

The bill is big, robust, and in many cases even more aggressive in it’s battle against C02 then the Obama plan (maybe for a reason: to make the Obama plan seem palatable in comparison?).  This one little subsection, however, has the Washingtin Times all up in arms.  They are worried about the huge number of new lawsuits that this could cause tying up the legal system.  Wait a second… does that mean that they are admitting that these hypothetical lawsuits would be justified?  That the realize there would be a reason to be upset at the Feds for their inaction on Global Warming?   Nah…

Legal Options for Those “Harmed” by Global Warming.

According to the Times, the bill opens up a direct legal action option for individuals who feel they have been harmed in some way by Global Warming.  I located the passage they are talking about in the bill, and the Times seems to have it about right: here’s a line or two from the SEC. 336. ENFORCEMENT bit of the bill.

The persons authorized by subsection (a) to commence an action under this section shall include any person who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part, to a violation or failure to act referred to in subsection (a).

What is harm, you ask?  Well as near as I can tease out, it’s a wide open definition: “any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring.”  Well, I’m an asthmatic, and it’s been getting worse my whole life.  Does this mean I now have someone to blame!?

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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

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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.

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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.

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Last year, Russian authorities gave Exxon the green light to build a pipeline across a lagoon on Sakhalin Island that is a crucial feeding ground for the world’s last surviving colony of Western Gray Whales.

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Help Overturn the Mandated “Pasteurization” of Raw Almonds

Almond Growers Sue USDA Over Compulsory Almond Treatment

Your support is needed to win the lawsuit brought by domestic almond growers against the USDA.

The Cornucopia Institute has been fighting to protect access to truly raw American almonds. When the USDA announced their intention to gas almonds with a toxic fumigant or steam-heat the raw nuts – and still call them raw – Cornucopia began working with almond farmers, consumers and retailers to block this misguided food safety measure.

This work has now led to a lawsuit challenging the raw almond treatment mandate. They need your help and support to cover the cost of this lawsuit!

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Over a year ago, the USDA implemented regulations requiring treatment for almonds, alleging that it was a necessary food safety requirement. Two outbreaks of salmonella traced to almonds were reported in the last ten years, one traced to a 9000 acre nut farm, and the Almond Board of California supported the USDA’s decision.

From the Cornucopia Institute:

A group of fifteen American almond growers and wholesale nut handlers filed a lawsuit in the Washington, D.C. federal court on Tuesday, September 9 seeking to repeal a controversial USDA-mandated treatment program for California-grown raw almonds.
“The USDA’s raw almond treatment mandate has been economically devastating to many family-scale and organic almond farmers in California,” said Will Fantle, the research director for the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.

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]]> http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2008/09/12/almond-growers-sue-usda-over-compulsory-almond-treatment/feed/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/01/03/california-suing-epa-for-blocking-car-emissions-rules/ http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/01/03/california-suing-epa-for-blocking-car-emissions-rules/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:45:40 +0000 Max Lindberg http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/01/03/california-suing-epa-for-blocking-car-emissions-rules/ They’ve done it, and help from other states is on the way. California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown has filed a lawsuit with the US court of appeals challenging the EPA’s decision to block California from implementing tough new standards on vehicle emissions. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is quoted as saying;

“It is unconscionable that the federal government is keeping California and 19 other states from adopting these standards. They are ignoring the will of millions of people who want their government to take action in the fight against global warming. That’s why, at the very first legal opportunity, we’re suing to reverse the US EPA’s wrong decision. By implementing these standards, California would be eliminating greenhouse gases equivalent to taking 6.5 million cars off the road by the year 2020.”

As I suggested in my “Open Challenge to California and all State Governments” of Dec. 20, 15 other states or state agencies are joining the action, including Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York.

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