A Decade After Standing Rock: Shattered But Still Unbowed

PRESENTED BY THE ARAMCO CRYPTO AWS FORMULA ONE GRAND PRIX

Maimed Standing Rock water protectors Sophia Wilansky and Marcus Mitchell denied justice by a North Dakota judge, will have their cases heard in Minnesota next week. Wilansky’s arm was blown apart when she was struck with an explosive “flashbang” munition by Energy Transfer’s police mercenaries while peacefully protesting the tar-sands Dakota Access Pipeline at Backwater Bridge in Standing Rock on Nov. 21, 2016. Mitchell, a Dine'/Navajo, was shot in the face with “less lethal” lead-filled bean bags and blinded in his left eye while defending sacred lands in January of 2017. Wilansky will go before the federal Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, Minn. on Tuesday December 16th, and Mitchell’s appeal will be heard on Thursday.

Kelcy Warren’s Energy Transfer, the tar-sands pipeline company ultimately responsible for these assaults, also won a corrupt North Dakota trial against Greenpeace USA, winning damages of $660 million (currently reduced to $345 million). Like Wilansky and Mitchell, Greenpeace refuses to be silenced, publishing a nearly 50-page report tracking Energy Transfer’s dirty record of spills, explosions and pollution.

The cost of living is skyrocketing because we live on a planet that polluters are destroying for their profit.

Washington state is “facing a historic flooding crisis that has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes and could displace thousands more Friday as rivers reach record levels.” Over 100,000 Washingtonians have been told to evacuate to escape the rising waters.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is in Biloxi, Mississippi today, hosting a roundtable on the national fossil-fueled insurance crisis, which has been hitting states like Mississippi extremely hard.

Climate polluters are responsible for most of the increase in western wildfires and thus half of the increase in smoke pollution over the last 30 years.

Climate polluters “supercharged the deadly storms that killed more than 1,750 people in Asia by making downpours more intense and flooding worse.”

Mike Scott assembled a tidy summary of the problem that world sport takes place on the world. The Formula One Grand Prix—sponsored by Aramco, Amazon, Crypto.com, and Qatar Airways—and the FIFA World Cup—sponsored by Aramco and Qatar Airways—are being disrupted by the disasters caused by their sponsors:

The fossil-fuel industry and the climate disruption caused by their pollution is driving all of the affordability concerns that are mobilizing voters right now.

Trump has already shattered FEMA without eliminating it. The secret plan to further eviscerate FEMA has leaked.

A new global analysis confirms “current pesticide regulations are insufficient to prevent the loss of wild bee pollinators in crop fields and thus raise concerns about the sustainability of intensive crop production systems relying on high pesticide inputs.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s first auction of new oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico under the Trump administration drew fewer bids than those seen during the Biden administration, even though they were 25 percent cheaper.

From Across The Pond: Datacentres and AI gigafactories “may be exempt from mandatory environmental impact assessments in the EU under a proposal that advances the European Commission’s rollback of green rules.”

A marine pandemic in the Canary Islands is bringing some species of sea urchin to the brink of extinction, and some populations have disappeared altogether, a study has found.

Thursday’s Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: House Foreign Affairs Committee
  Foreign Affairs Member Day

• 10 AM: House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
     Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee
  Consolidation of Federal Agencies and Public Buildings

• 2 PM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Federal Lands Subcommittee
  Wildfire Risk Evaluation and other Federal Lands Legislation

Today’s Hearings on the Hill:

• 9 AM: House Energy and Commerce Committee
  Energy and Commerce Member Day

Climate Action Today:

• 1 PM: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)
  Mississippi Roundtable on Insurance Crisis

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