FOR THE 1.3 MILLION MEMBERS AND ONLINE ACTIVISTS OF THE NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL JUNE/JULY 2012

in this issue

• Battle Over Pebble Mine Moves to the Boardroom

• Shell Sues NRDC Over Arctic Drilling

• Wolves Could Be Next Victims of Tar Sands

• Desolation Canyon Threatened by Gas Wells

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New Limits on Pollution For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed national limits on dangerous carbon pollution from new power plants. Carbon pollution imposes staggering health costs, making heat waves more severe and worsening smog, which triggers more asthma attacks and damages children’s lungs. The new safeguards follow a years-long campaign led by NRDC, including legal challenges that yielded two Supreme Court rulings that it is EPA’s job to curb carbon pollution. Just a few years ago, 150 new coal plants were on the drawing board. Most of them have since been shelved in favor of cleaner alternatives. EPA’s latest action sends a clear signal that plans for new conventional coal plants have become obsolete.

Wind Energy Gets Big Boost NRDC and other clean-energy advocates cheered the Obama Administration after it announced plans to speed up the development of wind energy resources off the mid-Atlantic coast. The move by the Interior

Department to approve “wind energy areas” from New Jersey to Virginia creates a coordinated siting and approval process that steers offshore wind projects away from environmentally sensitive areas. It promises to

give new impetus to the harnessing of wind power as a clean, domestic source of energy and to produce thousands of jobs in the process.

Whether you’re looking for that perfect Father’s Day present, a special way to honor a new graduate or an end-of-school gift for an A+ teacher, you can show your favorite people on Earth how much you care with NRDC’s Green Gifts collection. Protect polar bear cubs, adopt an acre of a whale sanctuary or even plant a rainforest tree in your gift recipient’s name. With more than 50 great tax-deductible gifts to choose from, you’ll find something extraordinary for dads, grads and everyone in between — and help save the environment at the same time. We make shopping easy at www.nrdcgreengifts.org

in the news

In an extraordinary maneuver aimed at speeding its assault

on the Polar Bear Seas, Royal Dutch Shell has filed suit

against NRDC and a dozen other environ mental groups

that challenged government permits issued to the company

for exploratory drilling in the Arctic this summer. Shell fired

the legal salvo after releasing a new and voluminous oil spill

response plan but before NRDC experts had time to analyze it,

much less challenge it. “Shell is preemptively suing because

they fear we might take more legal action to protect Arctic

ecosystems from the possibility of a catastrophic oil spill,”

said NRDC senior attorney Niel Lawrence. “It’s an abuse of

the legal system that tells you just how far Shell is willing to

go to start drilling this summer.” NRDC has asked a federal

court to throw out the company’s case.

A series of lawsuits already filed by NRDC, Earthjustice and

other groups could stop Shell’s drill ships before they begin

operating. As we go to press, those ships are on their way to

the Arctic Ocean, where Shell plans to drill in both the Chukchi

Sea, home to more than half of America’s polar bears, and

the Beaufort Sea, off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife

Refuge. According to the government’s own estimates, there

is a very real danger of at least one major oil spill if Shell

proceeds with oil production in the Arctic. Even worse, the

oil industry has no proven method for cleaning up oil in

these icy waters. Says Lawrence, “We will not let Shell’s

latest legal tactics stop us from defending the Polar Bear

Seas against Big Oil’s onslaught.”

Take action at: www.stopshell.org

SHELL SUES NRDC, OTHER GROUPS OVER ARCTIC DRILLING

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A trans-Atlantic campaign mounted by NRDC

and our Alaskan allies put new pressure on

Anglo American and Rio Tinto, the global

giants behind the proposed Pebble Mine, when they

convened in London in April

for their annual shareholder

meetings. Capping weeks of

public mobilization against

the toxic mega-mine, we

delivered 400,000 more

petitions of protest to

company officials and took

out eye-catching ads in both

The New York Times and the

Financial Times of London.

The full-page ads demanded

that the two mining

companies “Take No for an

Answer,” spotlighting their

broken promises and refusal

to respect the will of the Native peoples, fishermen

and other residents of Bristol Bay, Alaska, who are

overwhelmingly opposed to construction of the

massive gold and copper mine.

A delegation of leaders from Bristol Bay traveled to

London for the shareholder meetings, where they and

NRDC senior attorney Joel Reynolds urged Anglo

American and Rio Tinto to abandon a project that

threatens environmental and financial disaster. At two

miles wide and 2,000 feet deep, the proposed Pebble

Mine would generate an estimated 10 billion tons

of mining waste at the headwaters of some of the

greatest wild salmon runs in the world, imperiling

not only an unspoiled wilderness but the communities

that depend on it for survival.

The annual meetings showed

two companies increasingly on

the defensive, with cracks in

their unified front beginning

to show. While Anglo

American’s board chairman

attempted to dismiss the

intensifying opposition, Rio

Tinto’s chief executive, Tom

Albanese, made news by

announcing publicly for the

first time that he does not

support the current plan for

an open-pit mine because of

concerns about its environ-

mental risks. “An open-pit

mine is not the way to go . . . in my opinion,” said

Albanese. Mitsubishi Corporation, a former backer of

the proposed mine, withdrew from the project last year.

Said NRDC’s Reynolds, “We need to keep the

pressure on until the remaining companies deliver on

their promise to respect local communities, who’ve

said — loud and clear, time and again — that they

don’t want this mine.” To date, our Stop the Pebble

Mine campaign has generated more than one million

petitions, making it one of the biggest environmental

protests in history.

Battle Over Mine Moves to the Boardroom

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Our ad reached more than one million people on both sides of the Atlantic.

Campaign Update Slaughtering wolves is a desperate and tragic attempt to avoid tackling the real threat of rampant industrialization.“

The assault on Alberta’s boreal wilderness continues as oil companies flock to the province

to mine its dirty tar sands in a race that is taking a devastating toll on the region’s wildlife. The province’s popu-lation of woodland caribou is suffering especially heavy losses, with half of the local herds either in decline or at immediate risk of disappearing. In response, Canada’s chief environ mental ministry has proposed a drastic and controversial solution: system atically poisoning and killing the wolves that prey on the caribou.

There is no doubt that the woodland caribou roaming Alberta’s boreal are in dire trouble. The large, undisturbed tracts of old-growth forest in which the animals thrive — as well as the province’s bogs, peatlands and open meadows — are fast disappearing, owing in no small part to the break neck develop ment of the region’s tar sands. Four tons of boreal wilderness are destroyed for every barrel of tar sands oil that is strip-mined, and demand is growing. If the Obama Administration succumbs to industry pressure and approves construction of the massive Keystone XL pipeline, which could carry almost a million barrels a day of volatile diluted bitumen from Alberta to refineries in Texas, it

will send a clear signal to industry that it’s full speed ahead for tar sands extraction.

Environment Canada, the federal ministry charged with devising a recovery plan for the caribou, concedes that habitat loss is the number one factor in the animal’s decline. But instead of taking direct aim at the primary culprits — global oil companies that are ruthlessly exploiting Alberta’s tar sands — the ministry has put wolves in the crosshairs instead. Claiming that it wants

to protect the remaining caribou from predation, the government is proposing the extermination of thou-sands of wolves, according to a report released by the National Wildlife Federation. The methods for killing would include shooting wolves from helicopters and luring them to eat bait laced with strychnine, which causes an excruciatingly painful death.

“Wolves are not the problem,” says Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of NRDC’s International Program. “They have coexisted with the woodland caribou for thousands of years. Slaughtering wolves is a desperate and tragic attempt to avoid tackling the real threat: the rampant industrial ization of Alberta’s boreal wilder ness.” In a study published last year, a team of researchers led by

Dr. Samuel K. Wasser of the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology examined the scat from

more than 300 caribou and 100 wolves in western Alberta. The results were striking. Wasser’s

team confirmed not only that caribou make up just 10 percent

of the wolves’ diet, but also that the closer caribou were to oil exploration and development activities, the higher their levels of stress hormones and the poorer their nutrition.

The destruction of the boreal forest and the devastating toll it is taking on Alberta’s wildlife — including not only caribou but the millions of migratory birds that nest there — are just two of the environmental ills caused by the boom in tar sands oil extraction. Massive amounts of water and energy are required to transform tar-sands

WOLVES POISED TO BECOME NEXT VICTIMS OF ALBERTA’S TAR SANDS DEVELOPMENTAs Toll on Wildlife Keeps Rising, Political Battle Rages On Over Keystone XL Pipeline

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Above: Wolves and their pups could be shot or poisoned.Above right: Peace Athabasca Delta.

Slaughtering wolves is a desperate and tragic attempt to avoid tackling the real threat of rampant industrialization.”WOLVES POISED TO BECOME NEXT VICTIMS OF ALBERTA’S TAR SANDS DEVELOPMENTAs Toll on Wildlife Keeps Rising, Political Battle Rages On Over Keystone XL Pipeline

bitumen into crude oil, a process that spews three times more global warming pollution than does the production of conventional oil. Transporting the volatile, highly corrosive bitumen is dangerous as well, a fact underscored by several recent spills involving tar sands pipelines (including a million-gallon spill into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River) and the national outcry over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

NRDC has waged an intense battle against the pipeline, which was originally slated to cross Nebraska’s Ogallala aquifer, a key source of water for millions of Americans. The Obama Administration rejected a permit for the pipeline in January, after which Senate Republicans tried — and failed — to override the admini-stration by attaching an amendment to the trans portation bill that would have forced approval of the project.

On the eve of the vote, NRDC and our allies deluged senators with more than 800,000 messages of protest in a 24-hour period, demonstrating the breadth and depth of nationwide opposition to the pipeline.

“Keystone XL isn’t dead, though — not by a long shot,” says Casey-Lefkowitz. TransCanada, the Canadian energy giant behind the pipeline, is revising its proposal, and under intense political pressure, President Obama recently announced he would expedite approval for construction of the southern leg of

the pipeline from central Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast. Advocates for Keystone XL have argued that the pipeline would create jobs and lower gas prices, but a recent report by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute concludes that a significant number of American jobs could actually be lost, due to the likelihood of major spills and the damage they would cause. The first Keystone pipeline operated by TransCanada spilled 35 times in the United States and Canada in just its first year of operation.

“As for the price of gas, just look at the record,” says Casey-Lefkowitz. “Over the past decade our nation has increased oil imports from Canada by 50 percent, and during that same time, gas prices have tripled. When you look at what a raw deal Keystone XL is for Americans and for the environment, it’s hard to find anyone who stands to benefit from it — except the oil industry.”

Take action to save wolves at www.stoptar.org

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Above: Syncrude’s tar sands operation in Alberta. Left: The Clearwater River flows into the Athabasca, in the heart of the Alberta tar sands region.

Woodland caribou numbers are declining from industrialization.

Left: Thousands of wolves could be killed under Canada’s new plan.

Imagine dynamite going off near your home every 10 seconds, a near-ceaseless barrage of nerve-racking explosions as your children try to do their homework,

as your family sits down to dinner, as you try to sleep. Now imagine that this relentless assault lasts for days on end. It sounds like torture, but this sonic onslaught is exactly what countless whales and other marine mammals will endure if the Obama Administration goes through with its plan to open the majority of the Atlantic seaboard to high-intensity seismic exploration for oil and gas.

To prospect for oil and gas, the industry tows arrays of high-volume airguns behind ships, firing explosive impulses of compressed air every 10 to 12 seconds, 24 hours a day, for weeks and months at a time. It would be the first time in 30 years that the government has permitted this biologically destructive activity in the Atlantic, and Big Oil is already champing at the bit, applying to conduct seismic surveys from southern New Jersey all the way to Florida. NRDC is challenging the plan and mobilizing our Members and online activists to speak out against it.

“You can’t overstate how important sound is for marine mammals,” says Michael Jasny, NRDC senior policy analyst. “They rely on it to communicate, to feed and to find mates. We know that even at great distances, this kind of excruciatingly loud noise can cause whales

to abandon their habitat and to stop eating. And at close range it can cause hearing loss, organ damage and even death.”

By the Obama Administration’s own estimates, seismic exploration off the Atlantic coast over the next eight years would physically injure up to 138,500 marine mammals, including endangered fin, humpback and — most alarmingly — North Atlantic right whales, which are highly endangered. Hunted to the brink of extinction generations ago, North Atlantic right whales continue to struggle, with only a few hundred clinging to survival. Under the administration’s plan, a substantial portion of the whale’s migratory route would be subject to seismic exploration. The administration also estimates that the constant pounding of industry airguns would disrupt marine mammal feeding, mating and other vital behavior more than 13 million times.

“The impacts of oil and gas exploration could be devastating for whales,” says Jasny. “And that exploration is just a prelude to drilling, which we know from the disaster in the Gulf poses even more dire risks.”

I t’s one of the largest swaths of unprotected wildlands in the lower 48 states: more than 200,000 acres of

windswept plateaus and rugged, high-desert canyons in eastern Utah, including the proposed Desolation Canyon wilderness. Nature has taken eons to carve this geological wonderland, but it could all be despoiled in the relative blink of an eye if a massive new drilling project, authorized by the Obama Administration, is allowed to proceed.

Colorado-based Gasco Energy wants to drill 1,300 new gas wells in the area, including more than 200 wells within the proposed Desolation Canyon wilderness and its gateway areas. “It’s distressing that Interior Secretary Salazar, who has been a strong advocate of conserving America’s great outdoors, would let Desolation Canyon

be turned into an industrial wasteland,” said Sharon Buccino, director of NRDC’s Land and Wildlife program.

“The Environmental Protection Agency gave Gasco’s proposal its worst possible rating.” In addition to destroying thousands of acres of pristine wildlands while marring the landscape with drill rigs and new roads, the project would add significantly to the already hazardous levels of air pollution plaguing rural Utah.

Amazingly, some in the Obama Administration are pushing for more aggressive drilling within the proposed wilderness area than even Gasco originally wanted. The Bureau of Land Management has put forward a plan that would increase the amount of wilderness sacrificed to drilling by 32 percent.

“It makes no sense,” says Buccino. “Natural gas prices are at near-record lows; there are more than a thousand drilling permits going unused in Utah alone. The last thing Utah needs, environmentally or economically, is more drilling in wildlands that support a $4 billion tourism industry. If the Interior Department remains committed to this kind of reckless development, this is a fight we’re prepared to take to court.”

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North Atlantic right whale with calf.

OIL EXPLORATION PLAN THREATENS ATLANTIC WHALES

Green River, Desolation Canyon.

Vast Roadless Wilderness in Utah Imperiled by New Gas Wells

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Editor: Stephen Mills Managing Editor: Liz Linke Writers: Jason Best, Claire Morgenstern Designer: Annmarie DaltonDirector of Membership: Linda Lopez

All of the environmental projects and victories described in Nature’s Voice are made possible through the generous support of Members like you. If you like what you read, you are invited to make a special contribution at www.nrdc.org/joingive

NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL40 W. 20th St., New York, NY 10011 www.nrdc.org/naturesvoice • 212-727-4500 email: naturesvoice@nrdc.org

SWiTCHBOARD The following entry first appeared online at: www.switchboard.nrdc.org

NO TIME TO BE ON THE FENCE FOR POLAR BEAR PROTECTION Posted by: Zak Smith, attorney, Marine Mammal Protection Project

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it is undecided about whether it will propose tougher protections for polar bears at the next meeting of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). Polar bears need our help more than ever; now’s not the time for our government to be “undecided.” Two years ago, the Obama Administration led the charge at CITES, urging a worldwide ban on the comm-ercial trade in polar bear parts, including skins, teeth, claws and skulls. That proposal fell short because the European Union failed to back it. But the polar bear’s plight has only grown more dire over the last two years, as evidenced by

record prices paid for their skins, the unsustainable numbers killed in Canada (the only country that still allows the hunting of polar bears for international trade) and the stress on polar bear popu-lations in the face of melting Arctic sea ice.

We should be doing everything in our power to bolster these populations and improve their odds of survival until we can stabilize the global climate. The best scientific estimates show worldwide polar bear numbers plummeting by two-thirds over the next 40 years. Out of the five countries where they are currently found, they will probably cease to exist in the wild in four: Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States. Fortunately, we can strengthen their populations by ending the international trade in polar bear parts, which is driving unsustainable trophy hunting in Canada and poaching in Russia.

While the Fish and Wildlife Service still asserts that the polar bear merits greater protection under CITES, it has not yet decided whether it will once again spearhead the campaign to make that protection a reality. At this critical juncture in the story of polar bear survival on our planet, the Obama Administration should be leading the way, building a winning coalition of nations to guarantee passage, at long last, of a ban on the international trade in polar bear parts.

Make your voice heard at: www.polarbearsos.org

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NRDC SCORES MAJOR COURT WIN TO LIMIT ANTIBIOTIC USE IN LIVESTOCK

A federal court has ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

must take action to address the widespread overuse of antibiotics by the livestock industry, a practice that has been linked to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria that can infect people and cause potentially fatal illness. The ruling marks a major victory for NRDC and a coalition of other advocacy groups, which brought suit against the FDA after the agency stonewalled on the issue for decades, helping to fuel a growing public health crisis.

Infections from drug-resistant bacteria are estimated to cost Americans a staggering $26 billion per year, not to mention the toll they take on our health and our lives. More shocking is where some of these so-called superbugs are increasingly turning up: in the meat on our dinner tables. Indeed, thousands of pounds of superbug-tainted meat have been recalled after consumers became sick; the third-largest meat recall in U.S. history occurred only last summer.

Public health advocates have long warned of the dangerous correlation between the livestock industry’s profligate use of antibiotics and the

rise of superbugs, pointing to the fact that roughly 70 percent of antibiotics used in the United States are given to healthy livestock. Mixed into the feed or water of cattle, chickens and other animals, these drugs are given not to fight disease but to counter the effects of unhygienic living conditions and to foster rapid growth. In fact, the doses are too low to be therapeutic, which is a critical reason why some harmful bacteria survive and eventually become drug-resistant, causing human infections that can be serious and even lethal.

For more than 30 years, the FDA has known about these risks, yet the agency, bowing to pressure from agribusiness and Big Pharma, has done almost nothing to stop it, claiming that the livestock industry can effectively police itself. The agribusiness lobby, meanwhile, has been relentless in its use of scare tactics, saying that food prices will rise if antibiotic use is regulated — an assertion in direct contrast to what has happened in other countries, such as Denmark, where antibiotic use has already been restricted.

The court ruling will now require the FDA to act on its own safety findings and withdraw approval for most non-therapeutic uses of penicillin and tetracyclines in animal feed, unless the industry can prove in public hearings that those drug uses are safe. “This is a big step forward toward preserving the effectiveness of these lifesaving antibiotics,” says NRDC attorney Avinash Kar. “It’s time for the FDA to start protecting the American people instead of powerful special interests.”

Seventy percent of antibiotics used in the U.S. are given to healthy livestock.

Create Your Own Lasting LegacyYou can create your own lasting legacy when you include NRDC in your estate plans. A gift through your will, trust, retirement or life insurance plan will help preserve our magnificent natural heritage and protect the planet for generations to come.

For information on how to include NRDC in your estate plans or to let us know you’ve already done so, please contact Michelle Quinones, Senior Gift Planning Specialist, at 212-727-4552 or email her at legacygifts@nrdc.org

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