[Occupymendocino] Fw: New project: Fueling Plastics launched today!

Sat Sep 23 10:14:26 PDT 2017

We need to get off fossil fuels in order to stop drowning the planet in plastic waste! In 50 years it has become a global crisis!

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From: Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) <info at CIEL.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2017 2:06 PM
To: Ann Rennacker
Subject: New project: Fueling Plastics launched today!

Exciting news! Today, we launched "Fueling Plastics," an ongoing investigation that examines the deep connections between the fossil fuel and plastics industries.
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[Harvey Flooded Neighborhood 2017 Photo Credit: US Dep of Defense]Flooded Neighborhood after Hurricane Harvey, 2017. Photo Credit: US Dept of Defense

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Dear Ann,

Exciting news! Today, we launched Fueling Plastics<http://act.ciel.org/site/R?i=z5ZcvIPbjH60KyRO_Ujtgg>, an ongoing investigation that examines the deep connections between the fossil fuel and plastics industries.

Did you know that over 99% of plastics are produced from fossil fuel-sourced chemicals?

Or that fossil fuels and plastics are not only made from the same materials, but also made by the same companies? That’s how oil and gas companies like Exxon, Chevron, and Shell are responsible for both the gas in your car and the plastic in your water bottle (and why Dow Chemical runs its own oil and gas company).

Yet despite the global profile of these companies and their influence over how much plastic makes its way into our lives, their role in the plastics crisis is almost invisible. We are working to change that.

The two investigative pieces<http://act.ciel.org/site/R?i=vBPWOjN5hJ-Hk35BqVkDSg> we released today expose this connection and warn of an enormous wave of investment designed to turn oil, gas, and coal into an endless flood of new plastics. The fracking boom in the United States is fueling this plastics boom, with $164 billion slated for 264 new facilities or expansion projects in the US alone, primarily in the Gulf region. This massive expansion in plastics infrastructure threatens to lock us into decades of plastic production, plastic waste, and plastics contamination of our oceans, soil, food, wildlife, and bodies.

This impending plastics boom also heightens pollution risks for frontline communities throughout the plastics supply chain — whether near drilling or fracking sites, along pipelines, at ports, or alongside the petrochemical facilities themselves.

Even before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, massive expansions in the petrochemical and plastics facilities in the Gulf region threatened to increase risks for frontline communities. In the wake of Harvey, chemical facilities exposed communities and first responders to harmful levels of toxic pollutants, while explosions and leaks at plants that make chemicals for plastics have forced residents to evacuate their homes. As climate change raises sea levels and fuels ever stronger storms, the dense concentration of oil, gas, and chemical facilities in low-lying, flood prone areas has created a highly hazardous and uncertain future for local communities.

Hurricane Harvey demonstrated the danger of building such dense petrochemical capacity in the Gulf. Industry’s plan to double down on those dangers is unconscionable.

The good news is that many projects, including the largest, are still in the construction or planning stages. There is still time to change course.

This is why CIEL today joined more than 140 organizations<http://act.ciel.org/site/R?i=ntGBHHVvPdoBRvGQ1yQ3zg> in calling for a just recovery from Hurricane Harvey. Billions of dollars in aid are urgently needed to help affected communities recover, rebuild, and redevelop in Harvey’s aftermath. This creates an opportunity, an urgent need, and a responsibility to ensure state and federal recovery efforts remedy the systemic failures that led to Hurricane Harvey, not make those problems worse.

Following Hurricane Katrina, billions of dollars that were desperately needed to rebuild and revitalize communities were instead diverted to oil, gas, and petrochemicals companies. With former Shell CEO Marvin Odum appointed to lead the Harvey recovery efforts, we must be vigilant and ready to mobilize support for the full recovery of frontline communities in the Gulf. Taxpayer money should not be used to bail out the same corporate actors that caused or contributed to many of these problems in the first place.

In the months to come, we will release more new research on the how oil, gas, and coal are Fueling Plastics<http://act.ciel.org/site/R?i=_RQqMEf7WZQOjJUISFFCwg> and accelerating the climate crisis at the same time. And we’ll share new tools for taking action to confront these interwoven threats. We hope you will join us in this work.

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