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Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

siberiantimes.com

11–20 of 66 posts

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#11
post #2

Terrible. It's so upsetting to realise how easily we can (and do) destroy ecosystems.

>to realise how easily we can (and do) destroy ecosystems.

when you are in Russia, especially outside of large cities, especially toward the East or North, the vastness of your surroundings doesn't let you feel that you can do anything that will make any sizable imprint on the surroundings, and that feeling has been ingrained into the psyche for generations (it also correlates, with some philosophers claiming a cause here, with the Russian approach to politics in particular and the whole worldview in general :). As result you do everything you need or want without thinking of consequences, kind of like a puppy behavior toward large dog (the issue of course is that the "puppy" has long since grown up and possesses a large nuclear and chemical industries among the other things) .

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#12
post #3

Looks like that military base dumped something yellow and very toxic into the river (or some other organization, but we only hear of the military base being in the area). I wonder what kind of chemicals fit that profile? It's nice to live in a country where doing that means lawsuits and jail time usually. I doubt there will be justice in this case.

Do you have any examples of people in your country receiving jail time for polluting the environment?

On second thought - that's not the right question to ask. The better question is - does your country have many examples of people not receiving jail time for polluting the environment?

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#14
It seems that's the same bay as for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which with a population of 180,000 is Kamchatska's largest city. So this is very close to what amounts to a large population for Kamchatka.

The Russians have always been cavalier about pollution and, as much as it may be hard to believe for some Americans, even more cavalier than here in the US. Not the Russian people of course but their political systems whether Communist or post-Communist. Corruption, lack of accountability and so on. Then obviously Siberia is very large and very sparsely population and interested parties might think: big mess? No big deal.

Sort of like the intermontane west generally in the US. Wasteland, right?

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#15
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country do you live in? In mine, the good ol' USA, captured regulators just make it all legal. See fracking, for example.

It’s legal to dump industrial diesel into rivers in the USA?

After regulations have been relaxed recently, I wouldn't be surprised.

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#16
post #12
post #3

Looks like that military base dumped something yellow and very toxic into the river (or some other organization, but we only hear of the military base being in the area). I wonder what kind of chemicals fit that profile? It's nice to live in a country where doing that means lawsuits and jail time usually. I doubt there will be justice in this case.

Do you have any examples of people in your country receiving jail time for polluting the environment? On second thought - that's not the right question to ask. The better question is - does your country have many examples of people not receiving jail time for polluting the environment?

> Do you have any examples of people in your country receiving jail time for polluting the environment?

Yes [1].

The same is true across much of the EU. Russia’s lack of rule of law isn’t exactly headline material.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/criminal-press-releases-2019

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#19
I tried to generate a "story" using Planet imagery: https://www.planet.com/stories/kamtchatka-eco-disaster-4zV9_... The imagery from May 22 seems especially suspicious. Unfortunately there are some large gaps of images available (at least to me!)

edit: apparently I had too many filters on. Here's one with slightly more imagery: https://www.planet.com/stories/more-kamchatka-eco-disater-fr...

A few thoughts: seems to coincide with snowmelt... could be anything in the catchment area. Also, this is a volanic region so there's some possibility that there is some natural deposition of sulfuric acid. The latter also makes for great plausible deniability of course...

Re: Eco disaster at Kamchatka peninsula with mass death of sea animals

#20
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country do you live in? In mine, the good ol' USA, captured regulators just make it all legal. See fracking, for example.

It’s legal to dump industrial diesel into rivers in the USA?

May not be legal, but the current administration in charge of enforcing environmental laws doesn't seem very interested in doing so.
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