Tag: arctic

North America
rig

Suit challenges Trump order on offshore drilling

US conservation groups filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, asserting that the administration violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) by issuing an executive order reversing withdrawals of oil and gas leases. Trump signed the executive order immediately after his inauguration, overturning a decision by President Joe Biden to protect large areas of ocean from offshore drilling. During his first term as president, Trump tried to undo similar protections implemented by Obama. A federal court, however, invalidated his attempt, finding that the president does not have the power to undo a former president’s OCSLA protections. (Photo: Berardo62 via Wikimedia Commons)

Planet Watch
rare earth mine

Ukraine, Greenland and the global struggle for lithium

In Episode 265 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines Trump’s ultimatum to Ukraine to hand over a large share of its wealth in strategic minerals such as lithium in exchange for continued US military aid—and whether a race with China for control of the lithium and rare earth elements needed for Elon Musk‘s industrial interests might also be the agenda behind the Trump regime’s annexationist designs on Greenland. Trump is meanwhile opening Native American lands in Nevada to lithium exploitation, while Musk’s Tesla has sought to grab a share of Bolivia‘s lithium reserves—now also coveted by China. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: rare earth mine at Mountain Pass, Calif. Credit: Tmy350 via Wikimedia Commons)

North America
rig

Biden extends bans on offshore drilling

President Joe Biden issued two memoranda to prohibit new offshore drilling within three ocean and coastal regions, compromising over 625 million acres. One of the memoranda withdraws the entire eastern US Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico as well as the continental Pacific Coast. The other provides the withdrawal of certain portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska. According to the White House press release, the withdrawals in these regions are aimed at protecting “coastal communities, marine ecosystems, and local economies—including fishing, recreation, and tourism—from oil spills and other impacts of offshore drilling.” President-elect Donald Trump quickly commented that Biden’s action is “ridiculous” and promised to “unban it immediately.” Trump’s selected White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, characterized the memoranda as “political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices.” (Photo: Berardo62 via Wikimedia Commons)

Central Asia
Itelmeni

Russia: indigenous rights groups designated ‘extremist’

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders released a statement urging Russia to refrain from designating groups advocating for the rights of indigenous peoples and national minorities as “extremist organizations.” The statement follows a decision by Russian authorities a week earlier to thusly classify 55 such organizations. The Ministry of Justice cited a June ruling by Russia’s Supreme Court banning “structural divisions” of the so-called “Anti-Russian Separatist Movement,” which was defined as an “international public movement to destroy the multinational unity and territorial integrity of Russia.” Involvement in the movement may result in a sentence of up to six years in prison—despite the fact that no such movement formally exists. (Photo of Itelmen people in the Kamchatka Peninsula via Wikipedia)

Europe
BALTOPS24

Baltic brinkmanship amid NATO war games

Sweden’s armed forces charged that a Russian SU-24 fighter plane violated the country’s airspace just east of the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, calling the act “unacceptable.” Just days before the incident, Sweden and other NATO allies were conducting naval exercises in the area as part of the annual Baltic Operations drill (BALTOPS). Amid the exercise, the Finnish military reported a similar airspace violation by four Russian warplanes over the Gulf of Finland. This was the first time Sweden and Finland had taken part in BALTOPS. (Photo: NATO)

Planet Watch
anthropocene

2023: ‘bonkers year’ for global climate

Records were once again broken last year for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, and retreat of glaciers, according to a new global report issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WMO State of the Global Climate 2023 report finds that on an average day in 2023, nearly one third of the ocean surface was gripped by a marine heatwave, harming vital ecosystems and food systems—far beyond the already inflated levels seen in recent years. Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent on record—at one million square kilometers below the previous record year of 2022, an area equivalent to the size of France and Germany combined. One leading oceanographer wryly stated: “The scientific term is bonkers year.” (Photo: CounterVortex)

North America
russian alaska

Russia: irredentist claims on Alaska

The speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament threatened to “claim back” Alaska if the United States freezes or seizes Russian assets in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. “Let America always remember: there’s a piece of territory, Alaska,” Vyacheslav Volodin said at the last session of the State Duma before summer break. “When they try to manage our resources abroad, let them think before they act that we, too, have something to take back,” Volodin said. He noted that deputy speaker Pyotr Tolstoy had recently proposed holding a referendum in Alaska on joining Russia. The day after Volodin’s comments, billboards proclaiming “Alaska Is Ours!” appeared in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, apparently placed by a local “patriot.” (Map via Wikipedia)

Central Asia
russia

Podcast: the looming breakup of Russia

In Episode 118 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg explores the possibility that Putin’s criminal adventure in Ukraine could backfire horribly, actually portending the implosion of the Russian Federation into its constituent entities, the “autonomous” republics, oblasts and krais. Troops from Russia’s Far East were apparently involved in the horrific massacre at the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. But indigenous leaders from Siberia and the Russian Arctic are breaking with Moscow over the Ukraine war. Rumblings of separatist sentiment are now heard from Yakutia (Sakha), Khabarovsk, Kalmykia, Kamchatka, Tatarstan, Tuva, the Altai Republic, and the entirety of Siberia. China, which controlled much of what is now the Russian Far East until the 1850s, has its own expansionist designs on the region. Frederick Engels called for the “destruction forever” of Russia during the Crimean War, but it may collapse due to its own internal contradictions rather than Western aggression. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map: PCL)

Central Asia
Itelmeni

Russian indigenous leaders protest Putin’s war

Exiled leaders of Russia’s Itelmen, Kamchadal, Udege, Shor, Saami and Selkup indigenous peoples issued a statement declaring that they are “outraged by the war President Putin has unleashed against Ukraine. At the moment, the entire population of Ukraine is in grave danger. Old people, women and children are dying. Cities and towns of an independent country are being destroyed because their inhabitants did not want to obey the will of a dictator and a tyrant.” The statement adds: “As representatives of Indigenous peoples, we express solidarity with the people of Ukraine in their struggle for freedom and are extremely concerned about ensuring the rights of Indigenous peoples during the war on Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean Peninsula that remains illegally occupied by Russia.” (Photo of Itelmen people in the Kamchatka Peninsula via Wikipedia)

Europe
Belarus

Belarus ‘votes’ to abandon nuclear-free status

Amid an atmosphere of repression, Belarus voted in a referendum to approve constitutional changes that consolidate the power of long-ruling strongman Alexander Lukashenko—and drop the country’s nuclear-free status. On the eve of the vote, Lukashenko expressed his willingness to redeploy nuclear arms in the country’s territory, saying: “If [the West] transfers nuclear weapons to Poland or Lithuania, to our borders, then I will turn to [Vladimir] Putin to bring back the nuclear weapons that I gave away without any conditions.” After the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Belarus ceded the nuclear weapons deployed on its territory to Russia, and the Belarusian constitution declared that the country would remain a “nuclear-free zone.” This clause has now been expunged from the document. (Map via PCL Map Collection)

Planet Watch
DixieFire

UN climate report: ‘Code Red for Humanity’

Climate change is “unequivocal” and rapidly intensifying, and some of the changes already in motion—such as continued sea level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years, finds the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report concludes that human influence has warmed the planet at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years. Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe—including heatwaves, droughts, and tropical cyclones. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are higher than at any time in at least two million years. (Photo: CalFire)