Offshore drilling with push polar bears closer to the brink of extinction.

Posted by Sarah Kagan.

While Congress debated hotly contested energy packages, the Department of Interior was exposed for rampant corruption, drug use and sexual misconduct in a report issued last week.  With such high gas prices, Americans deserve real solutions to our energy security problems and honest, trustworthy agencies to implement them. Until the Department of Interior cleans house and reevaluates their entire culture of corruption, Congress should not authorize new drilling plans for the agency to implement.

The Minerals Management Service—the hotbed of the scandal—is in charge of managing our offshore drilling programs. This means that those entrusted with deciding how to use American’s resources were getting drunk at Shell-sponsored golf games or were literally in bed with oil company reps. Our government was cheating on America with Big Oil. Now that they’ve been caught, will things change?

Currently, Big Oil and their government friends are trying to jam through energy packages in Congress that will continue special treatment of oil interests and increase oil companies’ profits—at the expense of the average American citizen and special ecological areas that deserve protection. Senator Bill Nelson from Florida said it best: “The rest of the United States government doesn’t need to jump in bed with” the oil industry. Instead, we need to find real solutions to the current energy crisis.

We already know we can’t drill our way to energy security—even oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens admitted that. A recent national energy poll indicates that 83% of Americans support a plan to end our addiction to oil through investments in clean energy—some 20% more than those who support increased offshore drilling. Furthermore, the costs of drilling outweigh the benefits. According to the Department of Energy, offshore drilling will bring no relief at the pump. So for no economic advantage, Americans are being asked to increase our dependence on polluting and finite fossil fuels and put coastal communities, wildlife and ecosystems at great risk.

We’ve already seen the MMS recklessly sell off over 70 million acres of America’s rapidly changing Arctic waters to Shell and other oil companies—despite clear evidence that doing so will increase global warming, push polar bears closer to extinction and threaten the subsistence lifestyles of Alaska Native communities. Even the MMS’s own Environmental Impact Statement on the Chukchi Sea estimates there is a 40% chance of one or more spills spewing more than 42,000 gallons of oil into Arctic waters. What’s more, the environmental conditions in this icy region preclude even cursory clean-up efforts, and no reliable method exists for cleaning up oil in broken sea ice. Proposals to expand oil and gas exploration pose unacceptable risks to a system that is already badly stressed by global warming. They will also perpetuate our addiction to fossil fuels while further worsening the impact of climate change.

Instead, we need energy plans that will actually make a difference. A serious national commitment to renewable energy will put our economy back on the path to prosperity by bringing energy costs under control, creating over 820,000 new jobs, and making us more energy independent. The honest answer to our oil problem is to use less of it, and that means better fuel economy and a shift toward renewable energy. Instead of the failed policies of the past, it’s time to break our addiction to fossil fuels by shifting our priorities—and our policies—toward clean energy sources like wind and solar power and efficiency measures.

We shouldn’t have to watch MMS’s walk of shame. Congress needs to take a stand. They plan to hold hearings in response to this report; they should also stop any new drilling plans. Its time for government to break-up with Big Oil and push forward real energy solutions that actually help Americans and increase our energy security.

In an exchange, our partners from China met with US NGOs to learn about their work.

Posted by Xiu Min Li

Today I met one of the NGOs we work with in China – Green Student Forum. It is the foremost student environmental organization that is comprised of student groups across Beijing and the country. GSF is characterized by the discipline and enthusiasm of China’s new generation of leaders.

GSF’s office was located in one of Beijing’s tens and thousands of residential complexes, like most NGOs. When I arrived I was met by a student volunteer, Zhang Xiangui, the coordinator of the water project, and six other students. They were eager and shy. They shook my hand heavily and looked away as soon as I caught their eyes. I was sent to sit in the best chair in the midst of a room of tiny wooden stools.

These students came from the four teams of university volunteers who were assigned different sections of the Long River. They were responsible for organizing student volunteers from their own school to do a survey of the river, compile information about the history and important sites in the area, and interview neighborhoods along the river about their concerns. The end result would be a Green Map of Beijing’s Rivers. The plan was to include facts on the river and a conservation guide on the back of the map. This map would be distributed through various public events in schools and neighborhoods. They would also contact the Tourism bureau to see if they would be interested in distributing the map.

About eleven students and I went to do a field trip to the Long River. We went to Jishuitan, one of the subway stops I was most familiar with as it was nearest to my house when I lived in Beijing almost 7 years ago. It was still familiar but visibly renovated. A giant new bike tent was created with rows of racks two levels high. Across from the station is a shining new shopping center. The Military Theatre next door had a complete face lift. It used to be an aging building with a stale facade and a dusty ticketing booth that was always closed. Now it’s an artsy glass structure with spiky steel bars rising to the sky and a digital display of its current shows.  The sidewalks have all been fixed up and along the river that run through the area, it was landscaped with plants and trees along stone walls with carvings of calligraphies and were equipped with viewing platforms dotted with people fishing, couples cuddling and old people idling. A student from Beijing Normal University met up with us and served as local guide.

The students were pleased with the makeover but skeptical it would be kept up with after the Olympics. A decorated fountain was pumping up clear water that quickly merged into the deep green river too muddled to see through more than two inches deep. Occasionally there were tiny black fishes that swam right beneath the surface and they would be met with utmost enthusiasm by the students. I asked if people fishing here would actually eat them, they laughed. They fish for pleasure and always released them back in. The fish are not edible - some fish can grow even in the most polluted rivers.
We walked along the river on a stone path. There was a long patch that ran next to residential buildings and offices. It was a mile long path with no exit in between. All the entrances were sealed off with medal locks reinforced with medal fences. We just walked and walked and walked. Every section of the river was heavily maintained, either through careful landscaping or heavily secured fences. But clearly no one was keeping it sanitized because the path was dotted with spotty feces and trash that the students called bombs.

Our last stop was the reality part of the tour of the river. We arrived at a section populated by the “floating population” as the students called them – migrants who came to seek jobs and managed to stay within the city as opposed to being out on the 4th ring road on the outskirt of no man’s land. We immediately came upon foul odors as we entered a narrow alley leading to a settlement. Amongst dilapidated houses there was a hair salon and a restaurant. Three teenage girls with various styles of colored and spiky hair were lounging around in shorts and fixing their nails inside the salon where there was clearly no business.

After dinner, we returned to the office for the report and their plan for next year. Inspired by Fei’s visit to the US with the Green Corp, GSF wants to implement similar program in China. Through their experience working with other environmental NGOs, they feel that many NGOs’ main obstacle is lacking good leadership/organizers. They would like to establish a training program specifically to address that. The training would include team building, project management, technical understanding of environmental issues and other basic skills like material developments. Approximately five participants would be trained on this issue while taking on a community based project. They would then be dispatched to other established NGOs as interns during the summer to gain hands’ on experience in all the elements they had been trained on.

As I looked around the room, most students including Fei and Zhang were not from Beijing, with many from the countryside which desperately needed attention to their most basic environmental needs. From the perspective of building a widespread environmental movement across China, I felt that it was important to have an element in their training that involves students doing a small project to fix a small problem facing their own home town/village. They agreed that this would be appropriate at a more advance stage of their training, once they’ve been trained of all the elements of doing a project and gotten experience working with a successful NGO seeing how a project plays out in real life, it would then be a logical step to bring their new found knowledge to make a difference in their hometown.

Beijing, China

Posted by Xiu Min Li

Beijing was wet and grey this morning. There was no chance for a blue sky!  Today I met with Yu Zhijiao of CLAPV, the short name for Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims. Established in 1998, CLAPV is the foremost legal aid center in China for victims of environmental pollution. The center is involved in a wide range of programs to promote China’s environmental laws: it conducts legal research, produces popular guides to increase public understanding of environmental laws, trains lawyers, judges and NGOs on legal advocacy and it also runs a hotline for pollution victims.

I met with Yu Zhijiao, the Assistant Director of CLAPV. She was a short, baby-faced woman who recently completed her PhD at the university; she just started working full time at the center. Like many who spent most of their life in the academic world, she was confident and plainly dressed. She spoke very softly and even when she was being critical about something, her voice seemed to convey the opposite.

The center is doing some really good work, representing pollution victims that have no where to turn for their grievance. There’s a victim’s hotline staffed by volunteers five days a week to take reports. People can also write letters or send emails, faxes, etc. I asked her how many complaints they received on a daily basis. She said an average of six or seven. I was shocked. For a country of 1.3 billion people and with such notorious environmental record, I would expect the country’s only hotline for victims of environmental pollution to be receiving hundreds of calls. But then again the center is staffed by one volunteer a day, using one phone line. Yu explained to me that when she first started, the phone would ring off the hook throughout the day. She realized that it was because the center got a lot of publicity when it first got started. Their director, Wang Canfa, was constantly being interviewed by newspapers and televisions programs. But the center proved unequipped for the massive amounts of complaints it was getting from across the country. Since then, they’ve limited their publicity and the calls gradually went down. Now the center is dealing with about 14 active cases with an additional 4 cases pending further investigation to determine their eligibility.

My main question today was regarding the new Public Disclosure of Environmental Information Law that went into effect in May of this year. The center has been utilizing it on behalf of the alleged victims of environmental pollution. Yu showed me an information request form for one of their clients. Two fish farmers from Henan province suspected that a shoe factory nearby the farm was polluting the river and killing their fish. They called the center and this form was filled out for them. I looked at the form and found that it contained fairly technical terminology. One has to know what information to request in order to get the right information. An ordinary person would not know how to request the right information. Yu then explained to me that this is a case that has already been accepted by the center and two lawyers from Henan province are now dealing with it, with support from the Center. The plaintiffs in this case, the fish farmers, were suing for compensation of their lost fish.

I asked Yu how this type of litigation lawsuit fairs in China’s legal culture. She said it is still very rare that judges would grant financial rewards to victims of environmental pollution. More often than not, the judges would order the polluting factories to stop its practice. That is the best they could hope for.

Sakhalin-II caused severe environmental and social damage

Posted by Rachel James and Leah Zimmerman.

On the morning of September 7, 2008, Exxon and Sakhalin Energy prepared to face off in a much-anticipated soccer match to celebrate Oil Workers’ Day. Meanwhile, we (Rachel and Leah, two Pacific Environment staffers) packed a vehicle and headed north on the island with two staffers from Sakhalin Environment Watch, including Dmitry Lisitsyn, a superstar of the Russian Far East environmental movement. We traveled with Dmitry and Katya for three days along the Sakhalin-II pipeline route, a several hundred mile gash running the length of the otherwise wild island.

Dmitry’s questions are relentless. Whether addressing us, shopkeepers on the side of the road, or construction workers on the pipeline route, Dmitry is able to disarm and charm, while extracting critical information with measured precision. For us, time with Dmitry is a lesson in the art of community organizing as well as a lesson about Sakhalin-II itself.

We are struck time and time again by similarities between Shell’s activities on Sakhalin Island and the company’s current strategies in the Alaskan Arctic. Shell could easily write a textbook on how to break promises, give and take bribes, buy off scientists, employ divide and conquer tactics with local opposition, and emasculate environmental assessment processes.

Sakhalin Island was once a prison destination. Today, oil and gas pipeline infrastructure crisscross the island and inflation from the flux of oil executives and construction works has seriously changed the capital city, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. A two-room apartment goes for an exorbitant $1600/month, food prices are among the highest in Russia, and luxury SUVs can be counted by the dozens. While oil executives enjoy a luxurious lifestyle on Sakhalin, Sakhaliners bear the brunt of the grossly inflated costs for food and housing in addition to the devastating environmental, social and economic damage Sakhalin-II brought.

Now that construction of Sakhalin-II is nearing completion, Sakhalin Environment Watch predicts its next great battle will be poaching. We saw first-hand this week how Sakhalin’s rivers, like many on Kamchatka, are being raped by poachers who operate without fear of punishment from disempowered or corrupt government agencies. Imagine thousands of salmon returning to spawn in the river where they were born after years at sea. Now imagine a net stretched across the entire mouth of the river, preventing only a handful of fierce jumpers from among the thousands to return upstream to spawn. After a few years of this, we don’t understand why people are surprised that there are no fish left in the rivers. And so, Dmitry and SEW plot their next move …

Posted by Wen Bo

Day 1

Unlike those who arrive at the Beijing International Airport three hours before their flight’s departure, Su Jianhua and I got there less than 15 minutes before check-in closed. Both Su Jianhua and I are busy people; with China’s enormous environmental challenges, we environmentalists are racing against time. 

I woke up at 5am just to get one hour of emails done before packing for my trip to Central Japan, where Su and I are participating in the East Asia Youth Environmental Forum this weekend. Su and I have worked together for years. She is a volunteer board member of China Green Student Forum; her formal job is a researcher at Syntao, an enterprise that promotes Corporate Social Responsibility in China. 

We were the second-to-last people to board the airplane. The last one was an old Japanese lady who lost her boarding pass. Her perfect Mandarin amazed the airline staff, and also reminded us of the legacy of the Japanese occupation of China over half a century ago.

After nearly four hours in flight, we arrived in Nagoya. The airport has a nice and familiar code: NGO. From there, we took a train to Kanayama, which literally means Gold Mountain, where Sonwoo and Rina met us. Sonwoo is a Korean student studying in Japan and is a former member of UNEP Angel, a youth environmental club in Korea. He is now studying at the same university as Rina. Last time I met Sonwoo was in June, when he came to my presentation for Eco-League members. 

The Forum we are heading to is organized by Eco-League, a network of student environmental groups formally known as Japan Youth Ecology League. Each year, Eco-League organizes an “eco–gathering” that includes international participants, making it the East Asia Youth Environmental Forum.

At the station, we wait for another participant from Malaysia. Rina and Sunwoo decide to have lunch while Su and I take a walk around the area.  Su was impressed with both the amount of bicycles, and also the bike parking lots. She snapped some photos to show her friends and colleagues back home that developed nations like Japan still love bicycles. 

We ventured further and came across a store name “Eco Money”. From the setting, we guessed this was an eco-shop. We entered and immediately were attracted by all the various eco-products. The ladies in the store gave us a warm welcome and passionately told us about what they do. The store is a part of a chain of stores that encourage citizens to live an environmental friendly life.  They recruit members who use a special card to accumulate points. One can gain points for not using plastic bags at supermarket, attending environmental lectures, planting trees, using subways, and so on. They can then use the points they’ve accumulated in exchange for eco-products at any of the eco-stores.

 The concept is amazing. Su comments that this is what China needs to help save the environment – real life, eco-friendly activities that encourage people how to make an impact through their behaviors.

After learning that we were from China, the ladies kindly gave us a gift membership card. They also praised the Beijing Olympics and said how impressed they were with China. We headed back to the train station and met up with our colleagues even more enthusiastic for our upcoming Forum. 

 After a quick train ride, we reach a small place named Sekigahara. On the way, Rina told us that she had never been this deep into Japan’s countryside before. To me, this is just like suburban Beijing; I told Rina that she could explore even more if she travels to China. 

Sekigahara is small but famous in Japan. It is where the 16^th century the Battle of Sekigahara occurred, the largest battle of Samuri warriors in ancient Japan. It reminded me of the well-known Chibi (Red Cliff) Battle of Three Kingdoms which was recently made into a hit movie in China.

As we drive further down the winding roads, Rina’s cell phone signal quick fades away. “We are in the middle of nowhere,” Rina says. Of course, we are still in Japan, but one can tell how remote this place is. After unloading our luggage, I soon occupy the only computer connected to internet through a dial-up connection and that makes me happy enough, even if we are in the ‘middle of nowhere.’

Day 2

The venue we use is called Sekigahara Youth Nature Home, which is a facility for students and young people for camping and other events. It is like that of YMCA Point Bonita Outdoor & Conference Center, which Pacific Environment uses for its annual retreat. The Youth Nature’s Home has a 1500 square meter indoor stadium, where over 200 Japanese youth and a dozen international participants gathered for this year’s events.

On the evening of August 28, the first day’s overview and discussion started. Discussions were divided into different groups. Su and I attended the group discussing how to organized environmental activities in universities. Midori, the only staff member of the Eco League, led the group’s discussion. She told us Japanese universities generally lack interest in promoting environmentalism, and that it is quite difficult for environmentally-minded young people to find a desired green job. Three years ago when Midori graduated she had the same problem. According to Midori, Japanese companies feel that environmentally-active young people will surely come to criticize the company’s environmental records. They prefer to hire people who they think would bring immediate profit.

Like in other occasions, the participants here also draw on a big piece of white paper and brainstorm how NGOs, governments, companies, universities and students could work to promote environmental changes and a sustainable society. One thing missing in Japan is internship opportunities for young students. There are fewer opportunities for active learning. In China, internships are compulsory. Each student have to do an internship before they can graduate.

Midori introduced the Japanese Ministry of Environment, who are interested in promoting the concept of a green university. Last year, the ministry learned about the activities of Eco League and invited the group to help the ministry’s efforts.

Midori is a passionate young environmentalist who loves her bicycle. After failing to find a green job, she decided to work for the Eco League group as a full-time activist. Though the pay is low, especially in Japanese society, she believes in what she does. She works out of a tiny office space located in an old five-story building in Kagurazka, Tokyo, from which she is trying to enlighten as many Japanese students on issues like climate change and a green campus.

Eco League also has an office in Osaka, which covers the western part of Japan. They used to have an office in Nagoya five years ago. And the annual eco-gathering serves as an important event to bring new students and their groups into the network. Besides their own travel costs, each Japanese student pays around 200 dollars for food and lodging. Rina is actually a volunteer translator, so she does not have to pay. But to save travel costs from Tokyo to Nagoya, instead of taking the two-hour Shinkansen Express, she took a six-hour JR train that makes several stops along the way.

Day 3

After a light breakfast, 200 young people gathered on the stadium’s floor. They were told to choose a group according to their hobbies: movies, sports, music, etc. I went to the movie interest group, which drew one of the largest crowds.

After 20 minutes of introducing ourselves and which type of movie, actor or actress we like, the organizer regrouped us into even smaller groups with four or five people each to play a game. Here’s how it worked: Each group sends a person to pick up a note from a box, and then draws it while the rest of the group tries to guess what it is. After they get a right answer, the team sends a second person and then the third. Each round of drawing has a theme: the first round is an animal, second is Japanese cultural subjects and the third round is mixed.

It was a fun game. When a member of my group picked up a note saying champagne, he started drawing and people guessed it was everything from a dog to a kangaroo. But the difficult part is Japanese cultural ones, as we had to draw Samurai and shrines, etc.

After three rounds, we came to the final round. The awards for the winners were presents prepared and brought by international participants, ranging from a statue of Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Twin Towers, Indonesian wooden crafts and cookies from the Philippines.

After around 10 minutes of intensive competition, the final list of winners was clear. The first place group had first pick of a gift from the table. We cheered for the group of five Japanese students as they walked to the table and carefully examined the gifts. To our surprise, the decided to choose the cookies, not the twin towers, not the exotic foreign souvenirs. After every winning team claimed their shares, I came to the first team and asked them why they chose the cookies. The students replied, with the some typical Japanese shyness, that they wanted to get something that they can share with every member.

They celebrated their success not by the value of the award, but by trying to share the joy of winning. And I think that is the right spirit for a winner.

Pacific Environment’s Russia staff is about to undertake its yearly exodus to Russia for the much-anticipated annual Sosnovka Coalition meeting. Sosnovka is an annual meeting of all the top environmental activists from Siberia and the Russian Far East, with a few lawyer and policy types from Moscow thrown in for good measure. The conference is always a blur of intense strategy conversations and jovial social time. Many of the Sosnovtsy are old friends who see each other once or twice each year, which means Day One of the conference involves a lot of ‘who got married’, ‘who had kids’, and ‘who got divorced’ conversations. The strategy conversations are simultaneously overarching and specific, covering new and old topics: forestry, protected areas, mining, fisheries, oil and gas development, alternative energy sources, etc.

The Sosnovka Coalition is based on trust, mutual support, and effective communication. Modern-day Russian activists spend a lot of time on the road, in meetings, in court, conducting fieldwork and public outreach, and working multiple jobs. They are skilled in maximizing their time at the annual meeting, and the entire group communicates regularly and strategically via e-mail created to serve the Coalition and its working groups. Based on trust built over time, the Sosnovka Coalition is the backbone of the environmental movement in Siberia and the Russian Far East. All of the great modern campaigns (opposing financing for Sakhalin-II, rerouting the Siberia-Pacific Pipeline, etc.) can all be traced back to Sosnovka conversations. Stay tuned in October for the hottest news and the inside story on what Russia’s top environmentalists will focus on in the coming year!