#airislife — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #airislife, aggregated by home.social.
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🚨 We all knew this would be coming... Don't like polluters? TOUGH SHIT! You're under arrest!!!
#FBI #Counterterrorism Agents Spent Weeks Seeking a #ClimateActivist — Then Showed Up at His Door
The visit suggests a possible FBI probe into #ExtinctionRebellionNYC as the Trump administration increases surveillance of #activist groups.
Jacqueline Sweet, February 12 2026
Excerpt: "Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, at least one of whom works on counterterrorism, went to the home of a former member of a #ClimateActivism group for questioning last week, potentially signaling a new escalation in the Trump administration’s promise to criminalize #nonprofits and #ActivistGroups as #DomesticTerrorists.
"Two FBI agents, one from New York’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, told a former member of Extinction Rebellion NYC they wanted to ask him about the group at his home upstate on Friday, an attorney for the group told The Intercept. The visit followed a prior attempt to reach him at his old address.
"The FBI’s apparent probe of Extinction Rebellion NYC comes as the Justice Department ramps up its surveillance of activists protesting immigration enforcement and the Trump administration creates secret lists of domestic enemies under Trump’s National Security Presidential #Memorandum7, or #NSPM7." 'I believe this to be a significant escalation of the criminal legal system against #XR and find it very troubling,' said Ron Kuby, the Extinction Rebellion attorney. 'This is usually the way we find out an actual investigation is underway and is often followed by other visits and other actions.'
"The former Extinction Rebellion member, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear for his safety, said that the visit came after a phone call in January from a special agent that he assumed was a scam.
" 'I was skeptical the phone call was really from the FBI, but after I declined to speak with the agent, she said that she was standing outside my door,' he said. She was actually at the activist’s former address, which he said made him additionally dubious. But last week, when the agents showed up at his current address, he said he saw the agent’s business card through his door."
Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/02/12/fbi-counterterror-extinction-rebellion/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/4Nq3X#USPol #ExtinctionRebellion #CriminalizingDissent #AntiProtestLaws #EPAFail #Polluters #Corporatocracy #CorporateColonialism #Oligarchy #EnvironmentalActivists #WaterIsLife #AirIsLife #NoMiningWithoutConsent #ResistFascism #Authoritarianism #Fascism #Orwellian #ThoughtCrime #BigBrother #NineteenEightyFour #SilencingDissent #SilencingFreeSpeech #CorporationsAreTheRealTerrorists
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We can't breathe
The Invisible #ClimateChange Effect That Is Most Likely to Kill You
#AirPollution is less dramatic than floods or storms, less inconvenient, and much harder to politicize. It’s also much more deadly.
Liza Featherstone, August 1, 2025
Excerpt: "In #NewYorkCity, I’m lucky enough to enjoy better air quality than many other places. We are only the fiftieth most #polluted city in the world, way behind #Chicago, #Dubai, #Jakarta, #Delhi, and numerous (enormously populous) cities in #China. But for a few days early this week, it was hard to breathe and our phones were buzzing with alerts warning that the most vulnerable—the very young and the very old, and those with poor respiratory health—should stay indoors, due to smoke from Canadian wildfires. But the elderly, the asthmatic, and the babies weren’t the only ones feeling it; my son, a college soccer player, got headaches training outside, as did his friends—all fellow rain-or-shine athletes. Yet for the most part, the problem has gone unremarked.
"Compared to a flood, a fire, or a heat wave, a bad #AirQualityAlert isn’t that inconvenient even when it’s happening. You can still go to work and otherwise go about your day. If you own property, it won’t be damaged. And because #AirPollution lacks visuals, it doesn’t lend itself to morbid #doomscrolling or panicked media coverage.
"Yet compared to floods, fires, and heat waves, bad air is much more deadly. In fact, the danger is barely even comparable. The World Health Organization estimates that air pollution kills about seven million people every year. The direct death toll from heat waves is under half a million, although that’s getting worse. The number of people who die in floods annually is in the thousands, and the direct death toll from wildfires is much smaller than that, though these threats are also getting worse. "
#AirQualityAlert #AirQuality #AirQualityIndex #AQI #AirPollution #AirIsLife #ParticulatePollution #ParticlePollution
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From 2021... This started before #Trump, but things are way worse now!
#AntiProtestLaws Threaten #Indigenous and #Climate Movements
“#CriticalInfrastructure” laws in over a dozen states wrongly invoke national security to justify targeting #PipelineProtesters.
Kaylana Mueller-Hsia, March 17, 2021
"In 2016 as a member of Congress, #DebHaaland stood for four days in solidarity with protesters at the #StandingRockSioux Reservation against construction of the #DakotaAccessPipeline. Today, as the first #NativeAmerican to be the secretary of the interior — the first to lead any cabinet department — she has the opportunity to support the #FirstAmendment rights of the protesters she joined in the past.
"With her authority over energy development on federal lands, Haaland can be a voice for Indigenous and climate movements facing an urgent threat: the rapid spread of laws to protect 'critical infrastructure' that single out activists.
"Since 2016, 13 states have quietly enacted laws that increase criminal penalties for trespassing, damage, and interference with infrastructure sites such as oil refineries and pipelines. At least five more states have already introduced similar legislation this year. These laws draw from national security legislation enacted after 9/11 to protect physical infrastructure considered so 'vital' that the 'incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety.'
"Many industry sectors are designated critical infrastructure, including food and agriculture, energy, water and wastewater, and communications, but most state critical infrastructure laws focus more narrowly on oil and gas #pipelines. While protecting critical infrastructure is a legitimate government function, these laws clearly target environmental and Indigenous activists by significantly raising the penalties for participating in or even tangentially supporting pipeline trespassing and property damage, crimes that are already illegal. Many laws are modelled on draft legislation prepared by the American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as #ALEC, a powerful lobbying group funded by #FossilFuel companies like #ExxonMobil and #Shell.
"Central to the new critical infrastructure laws are increased criminal penalties and vague, broad definitions that could discourage protest and particularly, nonviolent civil disobedience. Many laws make any 'damage' to or 'interference' with a facility deemed critical infrastructure a felony. Under #Ohio’s law, trespass with the purpose of 'tampering' with a facility is a third degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine. In Indiana, a felony conviction is applied for any facility trespass, a crime that is typically a misdemeanor or fine.
"Vague language like 'damage,' 'tamper,' and 'impede' in critical infrastructure laws makes it unclear if, for example, knocking down #SafetyCones and starting a fire next to a natural gas facility are the same under the law. Many critical infrastructure laws do not clarify if they apply only to land a company fully owns or also to pipeline easements, which run through both public and private lands. At least some laws apply to both. Only a week after Louisiana’s critical infrastructure law was enacted, opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline were charged with trespassing for boating on public waters on the border of a pipeline easement.
"The combination of overly broad language and steep penalties in critical infrastructure laws make it likely that future activists and supporting organizations will be discouraged from exercising their First Amendment-protected protest rights. A lawsuit brought in response to the #BayouBridge charges will test the laws for the first time on First Amendment grounds.
"Many of these laws even extend beyond the protesters. In a proposed law in #Minnesota, anyone who 'recruits, trains, aids, advises, hires, counsels, or conspires' someone to trespass without a 'reasonable effort' to prevent the trespassing is guilty of a gross misdemeanor. In #Oklahoma organizations that conspire with perpetrators are liable to be fined up to $1 million. These laws may infringe on the freedom of association protected under the First Amendment. Indeed, the Supreme Court ruled that the illegal actions of a few individuals do not implicate an entire group.
"The criminalization of environmental protest is fueled by federal security agencies and oil and gas companies, who are often major political donors. For years, the Department of #HomelandSecurity and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have labelled activists at infrastructure sites as #DomesticTerrorists and violent extremists in order to justify further #surveillance and #policing. Government documents have been released that detail the FBI’s focus on '#AnimalRights / #EnvironmentalExtremism,' describing even #NonviolentProtesters as #extremists.
"At Standing Rock, a private security firm [#Blackwater] hired by the pipeline companies consistently referred to protesters as 'terrorists' while working with law enforcement. Ahead of the #KeystoneXLPipeline protests in 2018, #DHS agents held an '#AntiTerrorism training' for state and local authorities. In contrast, members of the #FarRight militant group the #ThreePercenters have established a significant presence at oil and gas plants with little law enforcement reaction.
"To be sure, as the recent power outages in Texas showed so vividly, the United States needs reliable energy. But it’s questionable whether pipeline construction sites that could feasibly be moved or replaced with renewable energy sources should legitimately be considered 'vital' to the energy grid. Furthermore, a singular focus on this aspect of security comes at the cost of others. Whose essential resources do pipeline projects protect and whose do they threaten? Black Americans are disproportionately likely to live near natural #GasPipelines and experience higher #CancerRisk due to unclean air. An oil spill from the Dakota Access Pipeline could devastate the #SiouxTribe’s water source. Meanwhile, on some reservations, 10 percent of households lack electricity and as many as 40 percent of households must haul water and use outhouses. The well-being of these communities must count too.
"The rise in critical infrastructure laws may foreshadow more anti-protest legislation to come. A similar wave of anti-protest laws has already begun in response to the 2020 #BlackLivesMatter protests. State legislators contemplating critical infrastructure laws should bear in mind that laws that criminalize trespassing and protect the safety of construction workers and law enforcement already exist. Critical infrastructure laws don’t fill an unmet need — they only raise the penalties for specific groups of people. Courts adjudicating #FirstAmendment challenges in the coming years should recognize that these laws are overbroad and impose disproportionately severe penalties that chill freedom of assembly and association.
"As secretary of the interior, Haaland promises to uplift the voices of Indigenous and climate protesters in the Biden administration. State legislators, law enforcement, and the fossil fuel industry should follow suit and listen to these activists rather than suppressing constitutionally protected activity under the guise of national security."
#BrennanCenter #Authoritarianism #Fascism #NoDAPL #NoKXL #PipelineProtests #WaterIsLife #ACAB #ErikPrince #BigOilAndGas #Oiligarchy #CorporateColonialism #EnvironmentalRacism #WaterIsLife #AirIsLife #ExxonLied #Blackwater #StandWithStandingRock #StandingRockSioux
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The smoke from #Canada’s #wildfires may be even more #toxic than usual
A legacy of #mining means that #ToxicMetals could be carried along plumes of smoke.
by Matt Simon, June 5, 2025
"More than 200 wildfires are blazing across central and western Canada, half of which are out of control because they’re so hard for crews to access, forcing 27,000 people to evacuate. Even those nowhere near the wildfires are suffering as smoke swirls around Canada and wafts south, creating hazardous air quality all over the midwestern and eastern parts of the United States. The smoke is even reaching Europe.
"As the climate changes, the far north is drying and warming, which means wildfires are getting bigger and more intense. The area burned in Canada is now the second largest on record for this time of year, trailing behind the brutal wildfire season of 2023. That year, the amount of #carbon blazed into the atmosphere was about three times the country’s #FossilFuel emissions. And the more carbon that’s emitted from wildfires — in Canada and elsewhere — the faster the #PlanetaryWarming, and the worse the fires.
" 'There’s obviously the #ClimateFeedback concern,' said Mike Waddington, an environmental scientist at McMaster University in Ontario who studies Canada’s forests. 'But increasingly we’re also concerned about the smoke.'
"That’s because there’s much more to wildfire smoke than charred sticks and leaves, especially where these blazes are burning in Canada. The country’s #forests have long been #mined, operations that loaded #soils and #waterways with #ToxicMetals like #lead and #mercury, especially before clean-air standards kicked in 50 years ago. Now everyone downwind of these wildfires may have to contend with that legacy and those pollutants, in addition to all the other nasties inherent in #WildfireSmoke, which are known to exacerbate respiratory and cardiac problems.
" 'You have there the burning of these organic soils resulting in a lot of carbon and a lot of #ParticulateMatter,' said Waddington. 'Now you have this triple whammy, where you have the metals #remobilized in addition to that.'
"What exactly is lurking in the smoke from Canadian wildfires will require further testing by scientists. But an area of particular concern is around the mining city of #FlinFlon, in #ManitobaCanada, which is known to have elevated levels of toxic metals in the landscape, said Colin McCarter, an environmental scientist who studies pollutants at Ontario’s #NipissingUniversity. Flin Flon’s 5,000 residents have been evacuated as a wildfire approaches, though so far no structures have been destroyed.
"But a fire doesn’t need to directly burn mining operations to mobilize toxicants. For example, in #Yellowknife, in Canada’s #NorthwestTerritories, #GoldMining operations between 1934 and 2004 spread #arsenic as far as 18 miles away, adding to a landscape with an already high concentration of naturally occurring arsenic. In a paper published last year, Waddington and McCarter estimated that between 1972 and 2023, wildfires around Yellowknife fired up to 840,000 pounds of arsenic into the atmosphere. Arsenic is a known carcinogen associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and developmental problems, according to the World Health Organization. (After the 2023 #LahainaFire in Maui, officials reported elevated levels of arsenic, lead, and other toxic substances in ash samples. California officials also found lots of lead in smoke from 2018’s #CampFire.)"
Source:
https://grist.org/climate/canada-wildfire-smoke-toxic-arsenic/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us#WaterIsLife #SoilIsLife #AirIsLife #Mining #ToxicLegacy #FirstNations #Canada #Pollution #Worldwide #AQI #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateCatastrophe #AirQualityIndex
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#Havasupai Elder #DiannaUqualla: #UraniumMining #Contamination is Here, Hold on to Your Ancestral Ways
"Stay strong, no matter what the world throws at us, we survive."
By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews, Feb. 24, 2025
TUBA CITY, #NavajoNation -- "Havasupai Dianna Uqualla said that she brought sad news, that the contamination from the #PinyonPlain #UraniumMine is already here, and has contaminated the air and the soil. Uqualla asked for the people to rely on their prayers and ancestral ways to guide them.
"Uqualla, traditional practitioner who served as the council's vice chairwoman, spoke at the #AwarenessWalk here on Saturday, as Native people from the region gathered to shut down Pinyon Plain uranium mine, and stop the #radioactive haul trucks from the #GrandCanyon to the #UraniumMill in the #WhiteMesaUte community in #Utah.
"Uqualla said Havasupai tested the soil and air and found contamination. 'There are people that hunt, people that gather medicine, they told us we can't go there anymore, until we stop them, but they are still contaminating.'
"Havasupai never said 'Yes' to this #UraniumMining.
"The tarps are not sufficient that are covering the trucks and there are no warnings to the people."
Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/02/havasupai-elder-uranium-mining.html
#HaulNo #NoUraniumMining #DefendTheSacred #WhiteMesaMill #WaterIsLife #AirIsLife #UraniumMine #ShutDownPinyonPlain #NoMiningWithoutConsent
#ReaderSupportedNews #TubaCityArizona #DontNukeTheGrandCanyon #DontNukeThePlanet #WeAreTheFuture
#Dine #UteNation -
The Dirty Secrets: #Whales, the #GrandCanyon and #WarCriminals
by #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews
November 22, 2024"People who travel the world will tell you two things that they really love: Whales and the Grand Canyon.
"The majestic Orca whales are now at risk from the massive oil tankers departing the shores of British Columbia with thick crude oil from Alberta tar sands in Canada, bound for distant refineries and ports.
"Meanwhile, in the heart of the Southwest, the Grand Canyon, loved by the people of the world, now has a uranium mine spewing radioactive dust into the air, and endangering Havasupai's aquifer and future generations.
"Neither the Appeals Court in Canada, nor the U.S. EPA and Interior have done anything to stop these assaults on the most beloved natural wonders in the world, whales and the Grand Canyon.
"Rueben George, səlilwətaɬ, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, remembers the long fight to halt the Trans Mountain Pipeline, now carrying crude oil from Alberta tar sands to the Salish Sea, which flows off the shores of British Columbia and Washington State to the Pacific."George said they thought they were winning their case in Canada's Appeal Court.
"'They said you're right it's going to kill all the Orca whales, you're right -- but we're going to build it anyway,' George said at the Salish Sea Assembly in Seattle in November.
"The uranium mine in the Grand Canyon is now spraying radioactive dust on Havasupai's medicine plants, and into the air for the world's travelers to breathe. The uranium mine, operated by Energy Fuels of Canada, threatens the aquifer of Havasupai and future generations.
"The mine's radioactive truck transport is a deadly risk for Supai, Paiute, Dine', Hopi and Ute on the haul route. The radioactive ore is transported by truck to the Energy Fuels mill in the White Mesa Ute community in southeastern Utah.
"Interior's Deb Haaland, who is Laguna Pueblo and Norwegian, has not only failed to halt the deadly risks and destruction, but has proclaimed that the atomic bomb industry, Los Alamos National Laboratory, will lead the green 'energy transition.'
"Los Alamos Labs produces nuclear weapons and is already poisoning the Pueblo homelands in northern New Mexico with radiation. A federal judge recently halted the push to produce and store more plutonium at the site, citing a risk to the environment."
Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-dirty-secrets-whales-grand-canyon.html#AlbertaTarSands #TarSands #LosAlamos #EnvironmentalRacism #Plutonium #Greenwashing #NuclearWeapons #UraniumMining #UraniumMills #DebHaaland #NuclearIndustry #AtomicBombs #Downwinders #Environment #WaterIsLife #Supai #Paiute #Dine' #Hopi #Ute #HaulNo #EnergyFuels #WhiteMesaUte #WhiteMesa #Havasupai #SalishSeaAssembly #Salish #OceansAreLife #RadioactiveDust #RadioactiveContamination #TsleilWaututh #TsleilWaututhNation #CanadasAppealsCourt #TransmountainPipeline #RuebenGeorge #BritishColumbia #WashingtonState #NoUraniumMining #NoTarSands #Oiligarchy #ExtractiveIndustries #CorporateColonialism #ReaderSupportedNews #ProtectHaKamwe #NavajoTransitionalEnergyCompany #DefendTheSacred #AirIsLife