Home » Posts tagged 'andes'

Tag Archives: andes

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Answering For Climate Change: A Peruvian Farmer Sues an Energy Giant

December 15, 2015

Glacier

ANSWERING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: A PERUVIAN FARMER SUES AN ENERGY GIANT

Saul Luciano Lliuya lives near Huaraz, a city in the Andes. Huaraz may not exist much longer, thanks to the swiftly melting Churup Glacier. The glacier feeds a lake which has grown more than thirty times in volume over the past four decades, and threatens to swallow Huaraz, along with Lliuya’s home and his farm. Scientists believe that the lake’s growth is a direct result of global warming. Lliuya has written letters of complaint to companies that contribute significantly to CO2 emissions, in the hopes of raising enough money to combat the problem and save his town and livelihood. His letters have gone unanswered.

LEGAL OR POLITICAL BARRIERS?

Lliuya, after being ignored by energy giant RWE, the “biggest single emitter of CO2” in Europe, has decided to take a different route, with the help of NGO Germanwatch: he’s suing. While many people believe that ascribing legal fault to companies that contribute to climate change is untenable, others disagree, like Andrew Gauge, West Coast Environmental Law Staff Counsel. Gage contends that the problem with tackling companies and holding them accountable for their contributions to global warming is not without legal precedent. Instead, he says, “The reality is that the barriers are political, not legal.”

That’s why Lliuya’s case against RWE is attracting so much notice. Even if the farmer doesn’t succeed, the outcome of the case could open the doors for future cases. As Gage puts it, “You can’t have a business model where you know you are causing billions of dollars of harm each year,” while discounting any responsibility for that damage. “Sooner or later, that conversation comes back to you.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Old, cold and bold: Ice Age people dwelled high in Peru’s Andes | Reuters

October 26, 2014

Old, cold and bold: Ice Age people dwelled high in Peru’s Andes | Reuters.

(Reuters) – In a bleak, treeless landscape high in the southern Peruvian Andes, bands of intrepid Ice Age people hunkered down in rudimentary dwellings and withstood frigid weather, thin air and other hardships.

Scientists on Thursday described the world’s highest known Ice Age settlements, two archaeological sites about 2.8 miles (4.5 km) above sea level and about 12,000 years old packed with artifacts including a rock shelter, stone tools, animal bones, food remnants and primitive artwork.

“What this tells us is that hunter-gatherers were capable of colonizing a very extreme environment, the high Andes, despite the challenges at the end of the Ice Age,” said archaeologist Kurt Rademaker of Germany’s University of Tübingen, who led the study published in the journal Science.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress