Environmental for Food Justice

BMG cyanide calavera. Art | Amy Woods. Photo | Devon Peña It’s the water, stupid! THE CRIME OF COAL MINING EAGLE PASS Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA | November 21, 2014 One does not have to travel to the Global South to witness the social, cultural, and ecological ravages of industrial mining. We can see plenty of damage in our own country. Colorado has a gold mining legacy gloriously celebrated in movies, books, and museums across the state. This is a mythical enterprise and promotes romanticized nostalgia and a warped ideology of rugged frontiersmen bravely beating back Indian savages to conquer the wilderness in search of a God-given right to make fortunes while doing their part for Manifest Destiny and the settler colony. In the real material world, Colorado’s mining legacy is encapsulated by one fact: There are more than 1,300 miles of mountain streams and rivers badly contaminated by acid-mine drainage from more than 23,000 abandoned mine sites scattered across the high country (see...

Courtesy of Lauren Musiello New report documents ecological footprint of fracking TOXIC WASTE IN THE BILLIONS OF GALLONS Devon G. Peña | Shoreline, WA | October 7, 2013 Our last work in this series was posted on May 30 2013 and was an op-ed piece prepared by Dakota elder Faith Spotted Eagle in which she discussed how the Keystone XL pipeline project as an example of how “environmental racism clearcuts the way for American economic development”.   The indigenous call for an end to environmental racism of the capitalist energy sector is all the more poignant in the light of a new scientific report that analyzes the ecological impacts of fracking. The report, which was released last Thursday (October 3), was prepared by Environment America Research and Policy Center   (EARPC) and is entitled, Fracking by the Numbers . It is said to be “the first report to measure the damaging footprint of fracking to date” but this claim is not necessarily accurate. We reported earlier in this se...