Mass environmental justice uprising engulfs Damietta on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast

The popular movement against a Canadian petrochemical plant has forced the Egyptian government to shut down the Agrium-Mopco gas-fertiliser factory, after residents shut down highways, bridges and a deepwater port, and battled the Egyptian military in the street. Grainy photos and video-clips  tweeted out – especially by Al-Jazeera’s @Mansourtalk – show locals standing up to...

Egyptian communities protest BP expansion plans

Egyptian communities concerned about a proposed BP gas plant on the Mediterranean coast have organised protests, including a sit-in on the site, road blockades and a raid on BP’s local office, as reported by Egyptian paper Al-Masry Al-Youm. The residents of Idku, east of Alexandria, are opposing plans to pump gas ashore from BP’s offshore...

When will Shell stop these daily oil spills?

Bodo resident, journalist and human rights monitor, Patrick Naagbanton, signed off his Comment piece in The Guardian by saying: We won’t be holding our breath. In an environment which suffers from daily oil spills, locals have learned that the multinationals, in particular Shell, and government authorities, will get away with almost anything. Earlier today I spoke on...

Tar Sands in Chicago!

Waking up in Indiana on Monday morning as my train trundles along the flat shores of Lake Michigan, BP’s mega-refinery at Whiting welcomes me to the outskirts of Chicago. Belching out pollutants over the local communities and into the lake since 1889, the refinery turns 410,000 barrels of crude into petrol, jet fuel and petroleum coke every...

Sailing the Hudson by train

I wake up from a light doze and search out the window for a mighty 19th century sloop looming out of the dark. But the wide Hudson River appears empty of sailing craft, with the wooded hills on the far banks disappearing into mist on this winter afternoon. Days of rain have welled the river’s...