Watch the Awards here:

http://mdgawards.org/webcast.html

More on the MDGs here (is it all a giant conspiracy?):

http://www.element-tv.net/mdg/

And more on Tina and Ifie’s fight to make the oil industry do the decent thing, here:

http://http:www.element-tv.net/news/2007/03/episode-2/

http://poisonfire.org/poison-fire-movie

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You don’t expect fire to feel metallic.

That’s what flaring feels like – you feel it as a whine, like metal being rubbed. Turn off the engine, someone said, but it wasn’t on – it was the flame’s vibration shaking the van.
Tina is angry. Why is this gas being burnt, when it could be used, and people are suffering because of it?

Then she’s quiet. It just feels wrong.

Gas is ‘flared’ or burnt up as part of the process of extracting crude oil from the ground. Separating the gas from the oil makes the oil more usable. This gas could also be stored and used. But it’s cheaper – if only economically – to burn it off than to build the infrastructure that storage would require.

Especially if you’re not paying for the damage locally, and the tab for the long term is split between everything on earth.

Gas flaring in Nigeria contributes more greenhouse gases – the gases contributing to climate change – than all activity in sub-Saharan Africa combined. More than from Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden or Norway!

Flaring is illegal in Nigeria: its toxicity and effects on health and the environment make it a violation of human rights.

Oil companies get away with flaring and other activities because we want more oil to do more with. There are ways to change this.

Tina and Ifie are filming testimonies so that people around the world see the local cost of oil.

We can also:

• Demand that energy companies are more socially and environmentally responsible
  http://climatelaw.org
  http://www.foei.org/campaigns/

• Write to the Nigerian government requesting that they uphold this recent court decision
  http://www.climatelaw.org/media/Nigeria%20May%202007

• Reduce how much oil (and gas!) we each use and support renewable forms of energy
  http://www.greenpeace.org<

• Read here for more on the oil spill documented by Tina and Ifie:

  http://www.eraction.org
  http://www.foe.co.uk

Tina and Ifie’s Element relates to Millennium Development Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability.