Greenpeace

Major Eco-Victory: Total's Application to Drill Near the Amazon Reef Rejected

(Brasília, August 29) — Brazil's Environmental Agency (Ibama) today rejected the application for a license to drill in the mouth of the Amazon Basin by the French company Total (operating in a joint venture with BP). This is an important step towards defending the Amazon Reef; a unique and largely unexplored ecosystem - Total's closest block is only 8km away from the Reef.

Keep reading...Show less

World's Largest Tuna Company Finally Commits to Sustainable Fishing and Worker Protection

It took two years of relentless campaigning and nearly 700,000 concerned people from around the world, but today we are sharing the good news that together we convinced the world’s largest tuna company to clean up its act.

Keep reading...Show less

20 Canned Tuna Brands Ranked: How Sustainable Is Your Brand?

The U.S. is the largest market for canned tuna in the world. U.S. consumers purchase countless cans and serve up thousands of tuna melts day after day.

Keep reading...Show less

How Fracking Has Changed One Woman’s Life (Video)

What would you do if one day you woke up and the water in your well was a brown, viscous mess?  

Keep reading...Show less

Donald Trump's Ties to the Dakota Access Pipeline

Since the presidential debate on Sept. 26, we've been hearing quite a bit about Donald Trump's tax returns (or lack thereof). While the conversation has revolved around why Trump has chosen not to release his returns—as all presidential candidates have since 1980—we do know some things about what those returns would reveal should he choose to make them public.

Keep reading...Show less

Meet the Oil Billionaire Quietly Shaping Donald Trump’s Energy Policy (Video)

Fossil fuel billionaire and major fracking proponent Harold Hamm, who has Donald Trump’s ear on energy and environmental issues, had a prime-time slot at the Republican National Convention (RNC), also known as “Make America First Again” night.

He was up there after businesswoman Michelle Van Etten and before unsuccessful Republican presidential hopefuls Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), as well as Eric Trump, Newt Gingrich, and Gingrich’s wife Callista. Trump’s vice presidential pick, Governor Mike Pence (R-IN) spoke, too.

“Make America One Again” night (formerly known as Thursday) featured retired quarterback Fran Tarkenton, investment company CEO Tom Barrack, and Trump himself.

It’s a line-up with no shortage of oddballs and extremists, but there’s a reason Harold Hamm’s name sticks out.

Hamm is straight out of the fossil fuel industry’s central casting.

He’s a climate-denying serial liar who made his billions at the expense of the Earth and its people. A genuine (as opposed to merely asserted) billionaire, Hamm is the 13th child of a cotton sharecropper who worked his way up through the oil business and whose company—Continental Resources—now controls much of the carbon-rich Bakken Formation in North Dakota.

In one of Trump’s hazardous forays into actual policy in May, he borrowed an often-told yarn about overly-zealous regulators. The story strayed from truth when Hamm told it; Donald inevitably Trump-sized the distortions. In Trump’s version, the Environmental Protection Agency has assessed corporations “multi-billion dollar fines” for causing the death of migratory birds.

(Fact check on that: it was not the EPA, it was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The proposed fine—eventually dismissed by a judge—was $420,000. To reach the nearest multiple billion, the unlevied fine would need to be multiplied by 4,761. No worries, if Trump is elected, those fines won’t happen anymore, he guarantees it. Even though they never did.)

Hamm not only originated Trump’s talking points for that speech, he introduced him at the event in North Dakota.

But Hamm’s fingerprints on Trump’s energy ‘policy’ don’t stop there.

The area where Hamm’s influence is perhaps most apparent is fracking.

In late 2013—when it became clear that liquid waste from fracking operations like Hamm’s injected deep underground were causing increasingly frequent, powerful earthquakes—Hamm acted decisively. Not to stop the waste injection and thus the earthquakes, but to silence the Oklahoma state geologists who made the fracking-seismic link.  

The state’s lead seismologist was summoned to a “coffee” with Hamm and Oklahoma State University President and former Republican Senator David Boren to discuss the matter (and, apparently, the seismologist’s career). By last summer, all of Oklahoma’s state seismologists decided to pursue other employment.

Trump, meanwhile has outspokenly supported fracking throughout his campaign, even referring to Hamm as “the king of energy.”

Hamm was also the top energy advisor to Mitt Romney in 2012 and pushed hard for the Keystone XL pipeline. Trump, as you probably guessed by now, is also a fan. 

In fact, one of the only areas where Trump and Hamm diverge is in the reception they’ve received from the Koch brothers. The Kochs and the Hamms go back years (and likely hundreds of thousands of dollars), while the Kochs—by some accounts the most influential conservative political donors and tireless funders of climate denial—have not warmed to Trump.

When it comes to energy, it’s Hamm all the way for Trump. And that’s terrible news for the environment. At the RNC, we got a better sense of just how terrible.

Watch a video of Hamm's RNC speech:

Keep reading...Show less

3 Disturbing Facts You Need to Know If You Eat Sashimi

One in three pieces of sashimi is from fish caught by Taiwanese fishing vessels.

Keep reading...Show less

4 Ways a Leaked TTIP Text Reveals Attempts to Undermine Environment and Health Protection Laws

Greenpeace Netherlands has obtained 248 pages of leaked Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiating texts, which were published on Monday 2 May at 11:00 CET. The documents unveil for the first time the US position and deliberate attempts to change the EU democratic legislative process.

Keep reading...Show less

Did Your Tuna Sandwich Kill a Sea Turtle?

The remote island atolls of St François and Farquhar are part of the Alphonse and Farquhar outer island groups in the Seychelles archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Like most of the Seychelles, these atolls are important nesting sites for sea birds and sea turtles, and are surrounded by some of the world's healthiest and most intact coral reefs. There is a small settlement on Farquhar atoll, but St François has no human inhabitants.

Keep reading...Show less

Documents Reveal Exxon Mobil Lied and Downplayed Contamination from Pipeline Rupture

On March 29 Exxon Mobil, the most profitable company in the world, spilled at least 210,000 gallons of tar sands crude oil from an underground pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas. The pipeline was carrying tar sands oil from Canada, which flooded family residences in Mayflower in thick tarry crude. Exxon’s tar sands crude also ran into Lake Conway, which sits about an eighth of a mile from where Exxon’s pipeline ruptured.

Keep reading...Show less
BRAND NEW STORIES
@2025 - AlterNet Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. - "Poynter" fonts provided by fontsempire.com.