Category: Uncategorized

Smart Mobs Halt Construction of a Chemical Plant in China

Article PhotoIn Xiamen, on the southeastern coast of China, a petrochemical corporation has been constructing a $1.4 million factory to produce p-Xylene, a highly toxic petrochemical used to make polyester for fiber and plastic packaging. Public concern in the city over the health risks posed by the factory’s presence has been stirring dissent for some time, but opponents face the powerful joint force of a corporation and the government. Then several weeks ago, someone sent a text message. It said: Once this extremely poisonous chemical is produced, it means an atomic bomb will have been placed in Xiamen. The people of Xiamen will have to live with leukemia and deformed babies. We want our lives and health! As the LA Times affirms, “cellphones present a new challenge to the [Chinese] government, because all but the poorest people in China own one and text messaging is ubiquitous — used far more often, and by a wider span of ages, than in the U.S., where it tends to be a tool of the young.” Spreading like a virus, the message was repeated more than 1 million times, environmentalists said, until it had reached practically everyone in Xiamen, a city of 1.5 million people…known… (more)

(Posted by Sarah Rich in Communications and Networking at 11:48 AM)

Greenpeace – Making Waves: MEPs show themselves to be a bit dim

The numbers are in and sadly they weren’t quite what we were hoping for. Despite the huge amount of emails you sent to MEPs, asking them to support a ban on inefficient light bulbs across the EU (and thank you for that!), not enough signed up to adopt the declaration.

We needed 400 MEPs across Europe to put their names down to this bright idea to take it forward. Yet despite a frantic round of last-minute phone calls from our European campaigners to their MEPs, we only saw 197 signatures before the deadline.

It doesn’t mean this is the end of the road – far from it. We’ll still be lobbying the EU to push for energy efficiency legislation and working on national governments to pull their fingers out. And if you’ve joined the 7steps programme, you’ll already know what else you can do for the energy [r]evolution. If you haven’t, are you waiting for hell to freeze over? No, wait, that doesn’t quite work…