Covert Geoengineering & Women Against Tar Sands

Jim Thomas of ETC Group on rogue geoengineering off Canada's West Coast by Russ George, former CEO of Planktos. "She Speaks: Indigenous Women Speak Out Against Tar Sands". Eriel Deranger & Freda Huson + Suzanne Dhaliwal co-founder of UK Tar Sands Network. World's most polluting project and pipelines threaten rivers, Great Bear Rainforest, and wild West coast. Radio Ecoshock 121017 1 hour

Here is your download list for this program:

Download/listen to full 1 hour program in CD Quality (56 MB)

Download/listen to full 1 hour program in faster download/lower quality Lo-Fi format (14 MB)

Download/listen to Eriel Deranger (16 min)

Download/listen to Fred Huson (17 min)

Download/listen to Suzanne Dhaliwal (13 min)

BONUS AUDIO - TA'KAIYA BLANEY

Hear 11-year-old child activist Ta'Kaiya Blaney from the "She Speaks" event. She started campaigning for Nature at age 9, starting with the Tar Sands. Since then she's been in two films and spoke at the Rio +20 conference in Brazil.

This recording from the September 21st event in Vancouver, courtesy of Redeye Collective, includes her hit song "Shallow Waters" so you might want to download the CD Quality version. 15 minutes.

Download/listen to Ta'kaiya Blaney in CD Quality.

Download/listen to Ta’kaiya Blaney in Lo-Fi.

JIM THOMAS, ETC GROUP ON ILLEGAL GEOENGINEERING IN PACIFIC

Download/listen to Jim Thomas from ETC Group on covert geoengineering (15 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi.

COVERT GEOENGINEERING

Russ George, former CEO of Planktos and D2Fusion

Russ George, the one-man geoengineering phenomenon, strikes again! And despite an ocean dumping and geoengineering ban by 192 countries, George has help from Canada and the U.S.

This time the green-talking former CEO of Planktos Corp didn't just dump some red paint off the back of rocker Neil Young's yacht, as he did in 2002. He's secretly added 100 tons of iron sulfate to the ocean off Canada's West Coast.

In 2007, Radio Ecoshock did a full one hour interview with Russ George, followed by a second program with his critics, including Pat Mooney of the ETC Group. Interest is huge. The Pat Mooney interview has been downloaded at least 20,000 times.

After Planktos went down in flames, amid accusations of shady promoters and stock manipulation, Russ George faded from the public eye.

But he never stopped dreaming he could help stop climate change using ocean life.

George wants to make money by seeding the world's oceans with iron to stimulate algae growth. Now the ETC Group has revealed his latest plot.

Radio Ecoshock speaks with Jim Thomas from the ETC Group, which at a Biodiversity Convention conference in Hyderabad India, heard rumors a geoengineering experiment had already occurred off Canada's West Coast. The group investigated.

Jim Thomas, Research Program Manager, ETC Group

They found serial ocean dumper Russ George was back at his game, this time claiming to have dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate into the Pacific Ocean. It was about 200 kilometers west of the mid-coast island of Haida Gwaii. George says he created an algae bloom covering about 10,000 square kilometers of ocean.

No one knows what effect this will have. Several nations conducted a series of similar experiments, with real senior scientists onboard, but stopped due to concerns raised about unknown impacts.

Jim Thomas said dumping iron into the ocean has not been proven to permanently sequester carbon, may in fact release other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide, and could remove oxygen further down in the sea, killing off other forms of life. Even noxious algae might grow as well.

As a result of this, and other work by environmental groups, scientists and governments - partly in response to earlier attempts to change ocean life by the private company Planktos, headed by Russ George - 192 nations agreed to BAN OCEAN SEEDING EXPERIMENTS, and then to declare a moratorium on geoengineering experiments.

During the Planktos adventure, which Radio Ecoshock chronicled thoroughly, both Spain and Ecuador closed their ports to Russ George and his ship the Weatherbird II. They wanted no part of his schemes.

CANADA'S SHAMEFUL ROLE IN SECRET GEOENGINEERING

But in the summer of 2012, Russ George set sail in the rented fishing boat "Ocean Pearl" from a Canadian port. He claims the National Research Council of Canada was aware of his project, and supported it. Some junior Canadian scientists went on board to watch the results. A Canadian company contributed equipment called "Ocean Gliders".

AMERICA TOO!

Even worse, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave Russ George very expensive measuring devices, including ocean buoy bots.

So two countries who agreed to halt ocean dumping and geoengineering in the ocean helped this amateur carry out a private geoengineering scheme. The Biodiversity Convention and the London Dumping Convention obviously need far more enforcement mechanisms, and more support from major players like the U.S., Canada and the UK, says Jim Thomas.

There have been a few exposes about the questionable dealings of Russ George, in Canadian and world newspapers, and on Radio Ecoshock, in 2007 when he attempted a previous ocean dumping plan. George was also head of a company pushing cold fusion, a technology that never materialized, despite being pushed in the over the counter stock trade. Find Steve Krivit's investigation into the many claims of Russ George here.

The ocean dumping company Planktos was backed by the disgraced (and convicted) Canadian financier Nelson Skalbania. Russ George promoted his plankton scheme to green groups without success. He managed to persuade the Vatican to use his company to off-set their carbon credits, even though he could not produce any proof that any carbon had been saved by his company.

This time, George persuaded a former commercial fisherman, now acting as a consultant for a small Haida village, in the Canadian coastal islands known as Haida Gwaii, formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands. That was John Disney. The two managed to find funding said to be over 2.5 million dollars for the venture, dubbed the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation.

I don't yet know where the money came from. Was it from the Haida tribe (who still wrestle with poverty for some of its members) - or from the Canadian government? Who paid for this carbon salesman to play with our common oceans, against all international agreements?

Be sure and hear my interview with Jim Thomas. My previous interview with Pat Mooney of the ETC Group has been downloaded over 20,000 times. It's important stuff.

You'll find a one hour interview with Russ George, where I confront him with claims made but not fulfilled. That blog entry, "Planktos: Offsets Real and Imagined" is here.

Download/listen to the matching 1 hour radio program here.

Then there is "Planktos II: The Intervention" - a full program with three guests who out the man, his questionable promotion of a cold fusion company, and his banned-from-trading man behind the scenes, Canada's Nelson Skalbania.

My guests in that 2007 program are Dr. David Santillo the Greenpeace scientist, Pat Mooney from the ETC Group, and Vancouver Sun business investigator David Baines. It's a tale of intrigue and misrepresentation that may have happened again - this time to a prominent First Nation in Canada.

Listen to/download that program here, and read the blog here.

I FEEL LIKE CHANGING THE PLANET TODAY...

This is one of my biggest fears about geoengineering. A single country could just start pumping sulfur pollution into the atmosphere, or even launch a rocket full of mirrors to block out the sun. Now we see it could just be a small scientific lab or even a member of the public determined to save the climate their way. It's a free-for-all, likely to involve more desperate measures as the climate deteriorates. We should be frightened by the example Russ George sets.

This "rogue geoengineering" in the Pacific is shocking behavior by Canada and the United States, both of whom agreed to the ocean fertilization ban, and limits on geoengineering. It's a disappointment from a respected West Coast tribe, the Haida - who have been environmentally progressive. Did they not look up George's record as a promoter who does not deliver?

I'm not disappointed in Russ George. Everyone expected this driven man to try and try again. Russ George thinks he's right, and everybody else is wrong. The publicity and the millions raised for each project, as the would-be "Doctor" or "Senior Scientist" sails again is all gravy to him. Russ George is a one-man ocean wrecking ball, and the poster-child for why we need ocean enforcement, and a real moratorium on geoengineering.

INDIGENOUS WOMEN SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE TAR SANDS AND PIPELINES

Stay tuned for another industrial crime. Indigenous women in Canada are raising their voices against the polluting tar sands, and the pipeline releasing their poison to the world. Others talk about indigenous people, trying to adopt that culture's wisdom. On Radio Ecoshock, First Nations people speak for themselves.

Who cares about another pipeline in Northern Canada? When it threatens to pump dirty Tar Sands oil to China and the world, everyone needs to know.

Those who know best are the native people living close to the biggest source of industrial pollution on the planet. And those depending on the thousand streams risking poison from the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta through British Columbia, to the pristine Great Bear Rainforest and coast.

First Nations women are taking the lead in speaking up for their communities, and the future. If the Tar Sands power Asia and America, climate catastrophe is assured. We can't let that happen.

Now you will hear First Nations speakers recorded September 21st in Vancouver. A UK activist also reports in on the international campaign to stop Tar Sands madness.

I'm Alex Smith. There's not much more I can say. Our future and our children are at stake.

We start with Eriel Deranger, Communications Director for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, neighbors and victims to the monstrous Tar Sands operations in the north of Alberta, Canada. She was recorded at the event "She Speaks: Indigenous Women Speak Out Against Tar Sands" recorded in Vancouver on Sept 21st, by the Redeye Collective at CFRO Coop Radio. (Thanks Jane!)

There was a parallel "She Speaks" event against the Tar Sands in Toronto.

This is Radio Ecoshock, with a special on the Canadian Tar Sands, and the fight against the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal that endangers the northern wilderness and the wild west Coast. Our next speaker is Freda Huson of the Wet’suwet’en Nation about a resistance camp built to protect the land from the Northern Gateway Pipeline.

The Northern Gateway pipeline would send highly toxic tar sands crude through 1,000 mountain rivers and streams, across the Great Bear Rainforest, to a narrow fjord at Kitimat, British Columbia. All that risk to feed the oil addiction of the United States and Asia, from the world's largest single source of pollution, the Canadian Tar Sands.

START YOUR OWN ACTIVISM

Suzanne Dhaliwal, activist

What can you do where you live? Listen to these ideas from the Tar Sands Network in the UK, represented by activist Suzanne Dhaliwal. She's speaking against the Northern Gateway Pipeline, proposed by energy giant Enbridge, to carry highly toxic Tar Sands crude. Enbridge has just revealed they had 31 pipeline leaks since 2002.

Coming from a background of climate activism and her interest in protecting wilderness for herbal medicines, Suzanne Dhaliwal was in the UK, attending a climate camp, when she really realized what the Canadian Tar Sands were all about. She had partly grown up in Canada, and like most Canadian, never grasped the climate-killing importance of the Tar Sands, or their impacts on both wilderness and especially the First Nations people.

This drove her to co-found a network in the UK to oppose investments in the Tar Sands. Big pension funds and British banks bailed out by the taxpayers were heavily invested in oil companies in the Alberta Tar Sands. They started actions toward disinvestment, and more tar free communities. Suzanne has some good ideas on how you could oppose the Tar Sands, wherever you live.

I'm Alex Smith, asking you to organize however you can to make more "tar sands free" communities, and to stop the spread of this climate-wrecking madness.

This has been Radio Ecoshock. Download this and all our programs from our web site at ecoshock.org.

Thank you for listening, and caring about your world.

NUKES, STORMS & FIGHTING BACK

Meltdowns, storms, and ships crashing together on the high seas, this is Radio Ecoshock.

For the coming months, we added dozens of new college and community radio stations to this broadcast, probably taking us to 50 more stations. I'm still counting.

As you may know, Daphne Wysham and her Earthbeat radio crew are taking a break, while they re-organize.

Even while off-duty, the reporter in Daphne never takes a break. Later in this program you'll hear her on-the-spot recording from a tornado-ripped town in the hill-country of Virginia. It's reality radio - with a vision of what we can expect in the coming climate-damaged world.

NUCLEAR SAFETY IN AMERICA - COULD A FUKUSHIMA ACCIDENT HAPPEN IN THE U.S.?

(David Lochbaum says "yes".)

We start with our feature interview. David Lochbaum is an American nuclear engineer, whistleblower, and expert for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Lochbaum warns reactor design, and unreliable cooling systems, and poor oversight leave Americans with the same risk of multiple melt-downs experienced at Fukushima Japan. We'll talk about how to make U.S. reactors safer for all of us.

We also go over David Lochbaum's testimony to Congress May 13th. Lochbaum taught safety to inspectors at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) a couple of years ago. Now he points to obvious weaknesses in the U.S. nuclear watch-dog system. The high price for negligence becomes too obvious after the Fukushima accident in Japan.

You can download that Testimony here.

It turns out only a dozen or so U.S. reactors have the 8 hour battery back-up installed at Fukushima. Around 90 American reactors only have 4 hour battery back-up. "The Cavalry" (new power lines, new generators, something) has to arrive within 4 hours, or a reactor without power starts the clock toward melt-down, which can happen within 24 hours. Not a good situation.

The American spent fuel problem is even worse. Where the biggest fuel pond (at Reactor 4) has around 1300 fuel units, a lot of American reactors have more than 3,000! There are no battery backups for their cooling. Period. That old fuel should be put into "dry casks" as soon as possible.

The fuel in dry casks at Fukushima was not affected by the loss of power or the Tsunami. Robert Alvarez has calculated the U.S. could go on a crash program to transfer most spent fuel to dry casks, costing a paltry 4 billion dollars, and taking about 10 years, if we get going. Get a pdf of that report here.

Cheap insurance, compared to a mutli-unit meltdown, and the risks when the spent fuel ponds (housed in the "attic" of many reactors) get hit with a hydrogen explosion.

All American reactors, Lochbaum tells us, are expected to have a plan for handling "severe" emergencies. But under the current regulatory system, those plans are more or less voluntary. And get this: NRC regulators are specifically forbidden to ask to see those plans. Lochbuam says we shouldn't wait for a bad accident to see if those plans are sufficent, or flawed. Then it is too late.

This is an easy fix for the NRC. Make those emergency plans mandatory and inspected.

You must hear this interview. Lochbaum does explain some emergency exercises held every 2 years (which local residents should know about). When I ask why the Japanese waited two months to admit they had melt-downs, Lochbaum reminds us it too FOUR YEARS for the operators of Three Mile Island to know they had a melt-down, or partial melt-down. They had to want for enough cool-down to lower a camera inside and look.

Otherwise, and I think this is a major flaw in this technology, if the gages and operating panels go down, as they did at Fukushima, there is no way to know what has happened inside, for months, or even years. That is just too opaque and risky, in my opinion.

ACTIVISM ON THE EDGE: PAUL WATSON AND SEA SHEPHERD IN NEW MOVIE.

Then you get the latest from famous environmentalist, Paul Watson, Founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. I recorded his speech after a new film, and the Q and A, along with Trish Dolman, the Director. It is an important update on Watson's campaigns with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

You may believe in Ghandi; Watson says non-violence can never stop pirates of the sea. He saved seals, dolphins, turtles, sharks, and whales - right from his early days in Greenpeace, to Sea Shepherd's latest campaign in the Antarctic, risking their lives to stop Japanese whaling. Now Paul has become a policeman for small countries plundered by foreign fishing fleets. He's headed to Libya.

I recorded Watson's speech following the Premiere of the new full-length bio film "Eco-Pirate: The Paul Watson Story." Don't miss the lively questions from the enthusiastic audience. It was shown to a packed house at the Projecting Change 2011 film festival.

Watch the trailer here. The movie comes out in theaters in July. The Producer is now off doing another series for Animal Planet, "Animal Hoarders".

This from the film's web site:

"Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson is a feature-length documentary about a man on a mission to save the planet and its oceans. Part Captain Nemo, part Grizzly Man, the film will follow Watson in the act as he repeatedly flouts the law, so that he may apprehend what he sees as the more serious law-breakers – the illegal poachers of the world. From the genesis of Greenpeace to the sinking of a pirate whaling ship off Portugal, from clashes with fisherman in the Galapagos to Watson’s recent headline-grabbing battles with the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctica, this documentary chronicles the extraordinary life one of the most controversial figures in the environmental movement – the heroics, the ego, the urgency – of the world’s original eco pirate."

What would you do to save the animals and the ecosphere? How far would you go?

Paul Watson says humans are a violent and dangerous species. This environmentalist, an early founder of Greenpeace in Vancouver, went to the edge of violence to save seals, dolphins, and especially the whales from human slaughter.

I've just seen the Premiere of a new film biography, "Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson". We see young Paul on a dying whale, standing pat in front of an advancing ice-breaker, ramming a rogue whaling ship, and taking on the Japanese whaling fleet, in harsh Antarctic waters. Writer and director Trish Dolman spend years on the ships of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. She includes the harshest critics, making this the definitive biography of one of Earth's greatest environmentalists.

This was hands-down the best green documentary I've seen this year. The Antarctic footage and ship-board life alone was stunning. Writer Dolman did not create a fan film. She went to Watson's critics, and there are many, from the Japanese Ambasador, through Canadian officials, even two wives and a daughter left behind on shore. The story of early Greenpeace is woven in, with a careful look at non-violence versus direct action. There is love and danger, when ships collide on the open seas, and you are there, as part of the crew.

In the end, despite criticism and doubts, admiration for Paul Watson cannot be denied. Certainly the living marine mammals he saved would vote for his life of activism - which incidentally, never cost a human life.


If you are new to this space, keep in mind we are filling in for that fine American green news program Earthbeat, while Daphne Wysham and her crew reorganize. After 8 years on the air, Daphne deserves a break - but we need her back, as one of America's top environmental reporters for non-profit radio. Keep in touch with the web site, earthbeatradio.org.

If you are just tuning in, you'll get double time today. This is Radio Ecoshock, and Earthbeat. Host Daphne Wysham is taking a break, while she and her valiant crew reorganize the program. I'm Alex Smith, filling in.

Even while off-duty, Daphne couldn't help hauling out her recorder and her reporter's instincts, when she drove through the demolish town of Glade Springs, Virginia last week. It was a month after one of the hundreds of killer tornadoes that swept through America, from Oklahoma all the way North to the Canadian border.

As we heard from weather meister Jeff Masters last week, we still don't have enough data to know if this year's record rash of tornadoes was triggered by climate change. It looks suspicious, and scientists predicted stronger storms, but the science isn't in.

What I do know: this is the kind of continuing weather damage we will see from an unstable atmosphere, as we continue to pour greenhouse gases into a sensitive atmosphere. More record flooding, more out-of-control wild-fires, and stronger storms will rip the roof off the homes and dreams of millions all over the world.

Is America a rich country? Or is it bankrupt? If you get hit by climate distruption, can you expect the government to help? Let's see who really shows up, with this on-the-spot recording of just one grandmother, Rita Muncey, who thought their family was safe. Daphne Wysham reports from Virginia, from the blown-down town of Glade Springs, Virginia, in late May, 2011.

For me that clip is much more than disaster entertainment. It contains almost everything I've tried to communicate on this show. Except maybe Rita Muncey says it better, being there in the moment, with children to shelter, poor, in the middle of such a rich country. My heart goes out to all the people who now fear the sky, and the power of Nature.

My conclusion: if the unstable climate finds you - don't expect government help. Your local community volunteers are the folks who really show up. Maybe it's time to join the Transition Movement, form a community support group near you, and build those relationships that will help you and your family through the hardest of times.

We've got some good interviews coming up for you. The new oil rush into the Arctic, despite the BP Deep Water drilling disaster in the Gulf. New science and new voices, all coming up for Earthbeat and Radio Ecoshock.

Please contact your local college and community radio stations, calling for true green news and analysis. Support this program, and we'll keep it coming, advertising free, and just plain free.

I'm Alex Smith. We live in challenging times. Join us next week. Thank you for using your ears, mind and heart.

Alex

The Age of Ocean Warming

This week's program opens with the song "Gas Pump Blues"
"Uploaded by theprizoners on Sep 13, 2008 words and music by bob dean and warren"

In this week's Radio Ecoshock Show we cover one of the most under-reported stories of this century: warming oceans. Up to 90 percent of the extra heat we create with rising greenhouse gas emissions is being hidden away in the world's oceans. Now they are heating up too.

Warmer oceans will lead to species extinction, adding to the great extinction now happening on land. Hotter seas expand, flooding coastlines. And warming oceans guarantee our climate will continue to heat, likely for hundreds of years after we stop emitting carbon dioxide.

Warming oceans will cost the global economy trillions of dollars, at the very least, and may break our civilization altogether.

I interview NASA's Dr. Joshua Willis, who explains the mechanics of heating oceans, and new areas of research.

Then we go to an expert in both oceans and climate, Dr. Alistair Hobday, of CSIRO in Tasmania, Australia. His testimony of species needing human intervention just to survive current warming is frightening.

Finally, I wrap up the program with a sample from "The Climate Show" out of Auckland, New Zealand. We get an update of the latest science showing positive feedback loops already operating in the world's climate. Yes, we are past the tipping point.

Here is how the program begins - and then I'll toss in lots of links in the full show blog (following the "Read More" jump).

Prices at the pump? Let's talk about these last days of oil.

After Peak Oil, there will be greater volatility in prices. According to the best expertise, including the International Energy Agency, we are already long past that peak.

A higher oil price can, after a delay of months or more, temporarily crash whole lines of business. Airline companies are often the first to fall, but everything from niche business to major corporations can totter into bankcruptcy.

Consumers find their wallets sucked into oil company and oil country revenues.

With reduced oil demand, prices drop. But not for long. Producers from Russia to the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, are completing long-term diversification strategies, consuming more of their own oil.

Meanwhile the Asian economies continue rapid growth. Electrification and construction grow into consumer cities, fed by oil and gas all along the way.

U.S. politicians pander to price-protected drivers, with suggestions of using up strategic petroleum reserves.

China is building the most extensive oil supply lines ever known. They have announced, and begun construction on a gigantic oil reserve system. A series of tank farms and other storage will house up to 500 million barrels.

Libya produced just over a million barrels a day. Canada produced 3.3 million barrels daily in 2008. The Chinese store of 500 million barrels allegedly equals 3 months of their current consumption. But that number is fuzzy. I don't know the real and current number for China's total daily oil use. I doubt anyone else does either.

But the Chinese are storing oil like gold in Fort Knox. In reality, when you need it, especially for a war, oil is far more valuable than gold.

Oil hoarding will push up prices even more. Now picture hoarding in a time of falling production, with a known limit to reserves. That is the next few years.

At some point, price shock knocks the globalized economy into a coma. Or worse.

And none of this mentions a further minor barrier to continued oil exploration. Scientists, hoards of them, hundreds of thousands of them, are narrowing the knowledge gap about our atmosphere and our oceans.

Climate change will batter, is already striking, the already weakening energy model.

We now know the atmosphere is far more sensitive than we thought. It isn't enough to stop greenhouse gas emissions. We have somehow to go back in atmospheric time, to a maximum of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent. That level, at least 40 parts per million below current measurments of CO2 alone - might preserve the polar ice that powers our entire climate system, as we have ever known it.

Our current path is climate suicide, as you will hear in this program.

There is one very big reason why humans must reduce CO2 to survive. It is as large as humans could imagine, for most of our time here.

The oceans are heating up. But we are almost blind to this awful development.

We know species are fleeing from tropical waters toward the Poles. Other marine species are appoaching the point where humans have to assist, like midwives, their current reproduction, due to the heat.

You will hear about that, and much more, from Dr. Alistair Hobday from CISRO in Australia.

I claim, and this is the inspiration for this Radio Ecoshock program, I say heating oceans will do three more things, at least. They will exterminate some species, adding to the Sixth Great Extinction now taking place on land. They will flood the major cities of the world. And ocean heating will cost the global economy countless trillions of dollars.

Probably the last item, the grubby money cost, is the only communicable news, through mass media?

In the last part of the program, you will hear some of the most depressing climate revelations I've heard in 2011. That comes from a new radio program "The Climate Show", from Auckland, New Zealand. Twice the value: a worthy summary of the latest alarming climate science, set in a sample from a program I think you will like, as an mp3 download, or on You tube. Stay tuned for details.

READ MORE

DEEP TROUBLE - OUR OCEANS

[opening clip from Greenpeace]


To be a life scientist now, is to explore despair. Arriving for the glory of the natural world, the experts find themselves chronicling the end of species, of the climate, of the ecosphere.

I'm Alex Smith. We're going to dedicate this Radio Ecoshock program to the sea, and to one of it's lovers, Dr. Daniel Pauly, head of the Sea Around Us Project. His latest article, published in The New Republic magazine September 28th, 2009 is titled "Aquacalypse Now, The End of Fish". I'll tell you where to find more Daniel Pauly online.


We'll hear some clips from Dr. Pauly, and an interview with one of his prize students, Dr. Jennifer Jacquet at the University of British Columbia. Her paper shows that a third of our ocean harvest is being fed to pigs and chickens. That's right, in this upside down world, pigs may not yet fly, but they have been morphed into major ocean predators, thanks to our industrial food complex.

In our second half hour, we'll zero in on the mighty salmon. This popular food fish is challenged around the world by humans - their rivers dammed, streams destroyed, our sewage and warming oceans. No worry. We'll make our own - farmed fish. Our guest Catherine Stewart of the Living Oceans Society warns that aquaculture, from Scandinavia to Chile, is pushing out the sustainable wild stock. Horrible things are happening, in places you and I never see.

Our Radio Ecoshock show for March 23rd, 2007 carried a 47 minute portrait of Dr. Daniel Pauly, based on a speech he gave at the Vancouver Institute, among other sources. It's still a good introduction to the man and his work. I'll play you a couple of minutes, and then we'll go to more recent news from his institute.


The music clip in there was from "Fisherman's Blues" by the UK band "The Waterboys". Find them at www.mikescottwaterboys.com

Now let's go with a teaser from the Daniel Pauly article that kicked me into action, again, calling on you to help stave off disaster, down deep in our oceans. This is the opener from "Aquacalypse Now":

[End of Fish reading]
[http://www.tnr.com/article/environment-energy/aquacalypse-now?page=0,0]


That was courtesy of The New Republic magazine. Get the rest at www.tnr.com.

In the show, we run a lively interview with Jennifer Jacquet, one of the new generation of scientists taking on the sea. She's the lead author on a new paper showing that a third of our fisheries catch is now going to animals, mainly pigs and chickens. It's a big conveyor belt taking the last of our sea creatures right into the agri-industrial complex.

Jacquett says consumer choice, knowing what to eat and not, is good - but nowhere near enough to preserve the fisheries. Pigs, chickens and farmed salmon don't get to chose their menus. We need to reach not just government, but the big fish companies, and the supermarkets - the big players that shape the ocean debacle.

We also chat for a moment about former ocean explorer and TV personality Jacques Cousteau. Why has he vanished from public view, and from the brains of the younger ocean science crowd?

Jennifer also talks a bit about Dr. Pauly.

I've covered scientist Dr. Daniel Pauly whenever I can. He's one of the most experienced. Other fisheries scientists use his calculations, and his software, to count the fish left on our oceans. Find his important speech to the Vancouver Institute on our Oceans page at ecoshock.org. That was delivered March 10th, 2007. I've titled it: Global Fisheries: Are the Gloom & Doom Justified? You'll find the full speech and the Q and A as free mp3 downloads.


Next I interview Catherine Stewart of the Living Oceans Society.

Catherine worked for 17 years as a Greenpeace campaigner, on both oceans and forestry issues. She represented Greenpeace in the negotiations with multinational forest executives, as they hammered out the Great Bear Forest agreement. That protected up to 50 pristine mountain watersheds along the Central and Northern coast of western Canada.

Then Stewart was hired by The Living Oceans Society to handle negotiations with a giant aquaculture company, Marine Harvest. It's one of three Norwegian fish-farming corporations straddling the world, from Canada to Chile to Europe. Living Oceans works in partnership with several other NGO's, including the David Suzuki Foundation, the Georgia Strait Alliance, and more. That's called CARR, the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform at http://www.farmedanddangerous.org/

Catherine and I cover the basics of salmon, followed by the latest moves to save the wild salmon from sea lice, pesticides, and escapes from farmed salmon pens.

You'll find out what you can do about it.


Salmon aquaculture, as we've heard, is simply unsustainable. Here is what Dr. Daniel Pauly said about it:

[Pauly on Aquaculture]

We could go on and on about the risks from fish farming. Just two quick examples. Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper reported November 23rd that Asian Carp were poised to invade the Great Lakes. DNA tests showed this invasive species, which threatens to kill off most other food fish from the lakes, has bypassed a fence set up by the Army Corp of Engineers. The fence was suppose to stop the Asian Carp from traveling from the Mississippi River to the Lakes.

The Asian Carp was brought to the United States to control algae in catfish farms. Now it's poised to wreak major changes in both Canada and the United States.


Or how about this one: some aquaculture operations have been feeding dried cow blood to the fish. Now scientists are hurriedly testing to see if that practice risks transmitting Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, known as Mad Cow Disease, through farmed catfish. See the article in Science Daily November 6th, 2009.

On October 22nd, 2008, Daniel Pauly listened to a detailed listing of the Canadian government's failure to protect endangered ocean species. This was a break-through speech by a top government advisor, Dr. Jeff Hutchings. You can download his "Lament for A Nation's Oceans", as recorded by Radio Ecoshock, from the oceans page at our web site, ecoshock.org.

When it comes to protecting the oceans, Canadians have a wretched record. The U.S. isn't much better. The Europeans have already stripped their cupboards bare. The Japanese steal fish from people all over the world. It's sad, and it's madness.

By the way, the latest ocean science questions why so many ocean species died during the great extinction periods on land. Like the time the dinosaurs died, and the four previous great extinctions. Many scientists now believe the ultimate cause of massive marine die-off was ocean acidification, derived from excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

[Pauly on extinction from acidification]


Finally, what does an ocean scientist say, one he knows that democratic governments fund the industrial fisheries, the very machine that strips our ocean stock down to nothing? Dr. Pauly was asked to comment, and this is what he concluded:

Democracy isn't working. The scientists tell bureaucrats the fish are disappearing, and nothing happens, no matter who is in office. All we can do is raise Hell. If we try as individuals, like the old anarchists, Pauly says, we fail. The only solution is to organize.

[Pauly clip Democracy Deficit Raise Hell]

Join the people who care what is happening to our oceans. Find your regional non-profit, join them, donate, help. Organize, or we lose the lush gifts of the sea.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock.

We close with a clip "Fisherman's Son" from the Rankins.

LAMENT FOR A NATION'S OCEANS

With the excitement of elections and a crumbling economy, who cares if ocean life is being killed off?

Jeff Hutchings does - even if the government is ignoring his warnings. Jeff is the Chair of the committee advising Canada on endangered species. And though warnings of extinctions come thick and fast - the government continues to issue fishing and hunting permits to kill off the last of a kind.

I debated running this speech, now, on Radio Ecoshock. Surely Americans will be too absorbed with their own affairs, to notice the end of fisheries of the world's longest coast line? Shouldn't I talk economy, with breezy interviews, and hot music instead?

My listeners do care. They know the human economy is build upon the natural economy. If our ocean stocks are going bankrupt, along with the food chain, we all need to know about it.

Normally, scientists at the top government levels work behind the scenes, keeping a cautious reserve and even secrecy. Not now. The situation off the coasts of North America, and the Arctic, are just too severe. Why even bother with endangered species, if the government will ignore all warnings - even if it saves just two - that's right TWO - jobs. Listen and weep.

Professor Jeffrey Hutchings comes from Dalhousie University, on Canada's East Coast. He's Canada Research Chair in Marine Conservation and Biodiversity. This is the Canada Oceans 2008 annual lecture, recorded by Alex Smith at the Wosk Centre of Simon Fraser University, in downtown Vancouver Canada, on October 22nd 2008.

It's a powerful speech. CBC Radio, the national broadcaster, was recording it for the well-known program "Ideas."

Two points for listeners: (1) the word "extirpated" means that species will disappear from the region, but may still exist somewhere else in the world. It only appears "extinct" to those who have known it for generations in a locale.

(2) "on the Minister's desk" is a quaint Canadian phase which means the scientists have put their endangered warnings in a report to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, for the Federal Government of Stephen Harper - but nothing has been done about it. It is being stalled, ignored, and in some cases abused - by approving a catch on endangered or severly at risk stocks.

You will also find out that Canada's most threatened mammal in the Arctic, due to climate disruption, is not the polar bear. Learn what it is, and why.

The event was held "in the round" at the beautiful Wosk Centre. The plush chairs, each with their own desk space and microphone, were filled with top fisheries people - the British Columbia government types, well-known university scientists, ocean environmentalists you see on TV all the time, and people who love the sea. In the quiet tones of a Canadian from the inner circle, Jeff Hutchings nailed them to their chairs.

Let's tune in to a lament for a nation's oceans, this week on Radio Ecoshock.

Alex Smith
Radio Ecoshock