A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

introduction – a new fossil fuel crisis 21Global warming, after all, isn’t the first fossil fuel crisis. Coal, oil andgas have been associated with environmental degradation, damagedlives, debt, 71 social confl ict and war for a long time, resulting in sustainedcampaigns of opposition.For decades, exploration for new oil and gas fields has gone hand inhand with encroachment on people’s land and with preparations todispossess them.Extraction has also provoked creative resistance all over the world, as,from Ecuador to the Russian Far East, from Nigeria to Burma, fossilfuel corporations, usually backed by governments, have stolen orcontaminated local land, forests and water while massively increasingthe debt of countries they work in. 72Refining and transport have brought their own legacy of impairment,disease, dispossession and contamination. And pollution from industrialand power plants burning fossil fuels has left a mark of suffering,disease and confl ict on affected communities for over 150 years.Road builtthrough forestin Ecuador toextract oil (top).Oil spill in theEcuadoreanforest (bottom).