Portside

Did you know that some of the fruits and veggies out on supermarket shelves are grown using wastewater from oil and gas operations? For the past several years, many drought-stricken farms in California’s Central Valley, which produces 40 percent of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, have been increasingly irrigating their crops with wastewater. Chemicals present include 16 the state classifies as carcinogens or reproductive toxicants, says EWG report.

A system based on the fair distribution of use values, decent work, and production and consumption levels that remain within nature’s biophysical limits cannot occur without the abandonment of a social order based on profit and accumulation.

On the morning of February 18, 2015, the ExxonMobil oil refinery in Torrance, California exploded, causing chemical ash to rain on the surrounding community for hours. Eight workers had to be decontaminated and four were sent to hospitals with minor injuries. With new evidence that the explosion could have been much worse, and that other aging refineries around the country are also at risk, scientists, industry watchdogs and a few lawmakers are sounding an alarm.

Residents of Richmond and other California refinery towns have learned, over time, to be wary of state and local officials too closely tied to companies like Chevron.

“What is most unfortunate is that polarization around climate change ... was manufactured by those whose financial and political interests were most threatened.” Even today, that polarization has crippled any hopes for bipartisan policy solutions.

How ConocoPhillips overcame years of resistance from courts, native Alaskans, environmental groups and several federal agencies is the story of how Washington really works.

The initial scope of the EPA fracking study was ambitious, though certainly not unachievable. The inherent problem, however, with technical studies of complex industry practices is that the EPA relies heavily on the willingness of the industry to give the agency access.

As the investigation continues into the oil spill along the California coast, new details emerged about the pipeline operator's long history of wreaking environmental damage. Plains All American operates the pipeline that burst near Refugio State Beach on the Gaviota Coast and dumped more than 105,000 gallons of crude oil into the ocean. Plains All American has been responsible for 175 spill incidents nationwide since 2006, including 11 in California.

A new left-liberal coalition has formed in Richmond, California, Former mayoral candidate Mike Parker called on voters and supporters to join forces. The task is need to challenge Chevron-backed candidates and those unwilling to stand up against Chevron when representing the community.

When we speak of WMD, we usually think of weapons -- nuclear, biological, or chemical -- that are delivered in a measurable moment in time. Consider climate change, then, a WMD on a particularly long fuse, already lit and there for any of us to see. From oil wells to fracking structures, deep sea drilling rigs to platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, the machinery that produces this kind of WMD and ensures that it is continuously delivered is in plain sight.