Rare rallies in Vietnam over mysterious mass fish deaths

[inanna]

Source: Reuters

HANOI
Sun May 1, 2016 1:28am EDT


Hundreds of people demonstrated in Vietnam on Sunday against a Taiwanese firm they accuse of causing mass fish deaths along the country's central coast, with some also blaming the government for a sluggish response to a major environmental disaster.

Though an official investigation has found no links between the fish deaths and a $10.6 billion coastal steel plant run by a unit of Taiwan's Formosa Plastics, public anger against the company has not abated.

Hundreds gathered in Hanoi holding banners that said: "Formosa destroying the environment is a crime" and "Who poisoned the central region's waters?"

Others said: "Formosa out of Vietnam!" and took aim at the government for being aloof in what it now describes as one of its worst environmental disasters.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-vietnam-formosa-plastics-environment-idUSKCN0XS0U6?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

[burrowowl]

1. K&R!!!!!!

[Gregorian]

2. Welcome to Overpopulated World- fasten your seatbelts, the ride is about to begin.

[reddread]

7. corporate disregard for local and global neighbors life safety has no correlation

overpopulation is a distraction.

[MisterP]

9. maybe it was, 5 billion people ago--but studies from El Salvador's forests to the Niger Delta

show that all these plantations--private or public--rely on growing populations to cut down their trees, drag up their mangroves, provide fishing slaves, dispossess the residents, etc.

in fact in order to follow the rubric of "developmentalism" these governments demanded a doubling of population: the Salvadoran law that gives you 30 years for a miscarriage is a bipartisan one; contraceptives and family knowledge were actively discouraged and illegalized for decades in the hopes of replicating Birmingham circa 1840

it's not a matter of a population mindlessly reproducing that has to be sterilized for its own good, but that the birthrate is a state project, as artificial as stadiums bigger than the village they're in or a Concorde landing strip in the jungle: as it turns out, Food First and the Rockefellers are both equally wrong

[reddread]

14. exploitation models vs. sustainability?

if we dont completely upend our ecological base, we can function and flourish.
the problem is greed's corruption, not the number of innocent bystanders onsite.

[Sunlei]

3. so this Formosa Plastics is a USA Corp? Formosa China Group runs the Asian Pacific Corp?

http://www.fpcusa.com/about.html
About Formosa Plastics - An Overview

Founded in 1978, Formosa Plastics Corporation, U.S.A. (Formosa Plastics) is a growing, vertically-integrated supplier of plastic resins and petrochemicals. With annual revenues of more than $5 billion, we employ over 2,400 people who operate 20 production units in six business divisions - Olefins, Polyolefins, Vinyl, Specialty Polyvinyl Chloride, Chlor-Alkali, and Oil & Gas.
Formosa Plastics is a privately held company headquartered in Livingston, New Jersey. Our core business, producing plastic resins and petrochemicals, takes place at three wholly-owned chemical manufacturing subsidiaries located in Delaware City, Delaware, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Point Comfort, Texas.

Formosa Plastics Group (Taiwan)

Formosa Plastics Corporation, U.S.A. is affiliated with the Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics Group (FPG), a global leader in petrochemicals, plastics and many other industries. Founded in 1954, FPG has grown from what was then the world's smallest PVC production facility into a worldwide organization; the group has annual revenues of more than $74 billion and over 103,000 employees. FPG also operates several prominent educational and medical institutions in Taiwan.

??

[ronnie624]

5. Few things generate profitability

like dirt-cheap labor and no environmental regulations, the whole point behind international 'partnerships' that are promoted by corporatists.

[JudyM]

13. ^^^^nail on the head truth^^^^

We need to keep pushing companies to develop more robust ethical priorities -- through social media pressure and shareholder activism.

[Baobab]

4. Plastics chemicals are among the most dangerous to reproduction

because they are endocrine disrupters.

And they build up in the environment and they store in fat and make people fatter. The body cannot eliminate them as it should so it stores them in fat.


They can cause indeterminate sex organs in babies and also they cause lots of cancers.

The cost to the EU is upward of 150 billion euros/year. Us is probably comparable but we don't know because of lack of access to health care.

Endocrine disrupters on Pubmed.gov brings back a lot of hits.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. K&R for shameful.

[NickB79]

8. Southeast Asia is in the grip of a massive heatwave right now

https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/extraordinary-heat-wave-sweeps-southeast-asia-and-points-beyond

What is most likely the most intense heat wave ever observed in Southeast Asia has been ongoing for the past several weeks. All-time national heat records have been observed in Cambodia, Laos, and (almost) in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. Meanwhile extreme heat has resulted in all-time record high temperatures in the Maldives, India, China, and portions of Africa as well. Here are the details.

That alone is enough to explain a lot of the fish deaths going on now.

[sofa king]

10. Sure could be.

Water temperature is one of the primary causes of fish-kills. The higher the temperature over 20 deg C (68 F), the lower the dissolved oxygen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxia_in_fish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_kill

[riderinthestorm]

12. Climate change is already killing. In 1970 there were no recorded heatwaves

They were so rare as to be considered anomalies.

Now we track them since they happen so regularly. Russia's last heat wave killed 55,000 people.

[Coventina]

11. Fish farming has been an important way to earn oneself out of poverty in Vietnam.

I am not at all surprised that there would be civil unrest over the issue, whatever the cause happens to be.