Mining The Earth & Fracking The World: A Long Walk For The Climate

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Every week, Kate Lanier assembles the most important global energy and climate news. This week includes:

New Mexicio: Diné youth are so concerned about corporate exploitation of underground resources, including oil and uranium, that they have embarked on a prayer walk of 200 miles. This first walk honors “The Long Walk of the Diné People to Ft. Sumner, New Mexico.” Other walks will follow this year.

Colombia: The underground Ocensa pipeline, carrying 650,000 barrels of crude/day between the huge Cusiana-Cupiagua oilfield to the Caribbean coast, built only about 15 years ago, has eroded campesinos’ farmland and led to severe loss of income. Campesinos sued BP in the UK seven years ago. The court case is nearing conclusion.

India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will invest $100 billion in solar power and put solar plants “atop canals: efficient and cheap land use, and reduce water evaporation from the channels underneath.” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is quite impressed.

Gardens Of Hope: Can Seed Libraries Be Saved From ALEC?

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Back in August, we learned of a crack-down in Pennslyvania due to certain activity at the Joseph T. Simpson Library in Mechanicsburg, activity so serious the state dispatched “a high-ranking official and lawyers to a meeting with the library.” Whatever had happened at this otherwise innocent-looking location to warrant such a response?

It seems the Simpson Library was in violation of the Pennsylvania Seed Act of 2004. A member of the Cumberland County Commission, where Mechanicsburg is located, quickly raised her voice and exclaimed, “Agri-terrorism.” Other Commissioners, however, more calmly wondered why the state had taken such interest in the local seed lending library, one among some 340 community libraries across the country at that time which had small seed-sharing programs.

Seeds brought to the library are carefully labeled, placed in small paper or plastic envelopes, then filed, typically using those wooden card catalogs of yesterday. Library patrons check out or “borrow” seeds and take them home to grow in the spring. If the seeds result in a good harvest, gardeners collect some seeds from the plants they’ve grown and replenish the library’s holdings the following fall.

Erik Prince: What Doesn’t He Know And When Didn’t He Know It?

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Robert Young Pelton was one of the first authors to write about Blackwater, having spent a month running Route Irish with the same Blackwater rapid reaction security detail in Baghdad that would ultimately be involved in the Nisour Square shootout.

That was probably why Erik Prince turned to him when seeking help in editing and marketing his memoir. Pelton claims Prince didn’t pay what he is owed and is suing him. Predictably, Prince, who is no stranger to litigation, is countersuing, alleging that Pelton should not have applied money Prince contractually owed Pelton for a subscription to Somalia Report, a website Pelton created to cover all aspects of the Horn of Africa region.

But while all of this is entertaining it is, at least for those who follow the private military and security sector, not breaking news. The reason I mention it, however, was this bit in the Washington Post article:

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