The Brazilian ecological president Lula sinks a ship full of asbestos and toxic products in the Atlantic
Brazil has sparked anger from environmental activists around the world after the government ordered the scuttling of a disused aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean, a plan carried out on Friday.
Intentionally sinking the toxic aircraft carrier São Paulo would equate to a state-sponsored environmental crime. https://t.co/efiH9KLVSI
— NGO Shipbreaking Platform (@NGOShipbreaking) January 21, 2023
The "planned and controlled sinking occurred in the late afternoon" about 220 miles off the Brazilian coast, at a location with an "approximate depth of 5,000 meters," the Brazilian Navy confirmed in a statement.
“Regarding the hull of the decommissioned aircraft carrier 'San Paolo' … we inform you that the planned and controlled sinking operation was carried out in the late afternoon of February 3, in strict accordance with the plan,” the Navy explained.
Although the Navy said it had scuttled the vessel in the safest possible area after authorities failed to find a port that could permanently house the massive 60-year-old aircraft carrier, environmentalists are outraged and have called for to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who recently took office, to stop the Navy's plans as a matter of urgency.
Activists described the aircraft carrier as being filled with toxic materials, including asbestos and heavy metals, which will inevitably seep into ocean waters and harm marine life.
The aircraft carrier is also said to be severely rusting, and authorities deemed it a safety risk if anchored directly off the coast, given environmental factors so close to the shoreline and human civilization. Some international observers have gone so far as to call Brazil's actions a "state-sponsored environmental crime"…
International appeals to the far-left Brazilian president to block the Navy's plan have led to no direct action:
A day before the sinking, the Brazilian Attorney General's Office filed a new appeal with the Justice Department, stating that the ship was carrying 9.6 tons of asbestos, a toxic substance, as well as 644 tons of poxic paint and "other dangerous".
The NGO Basel Action Network (BAN) called on Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to immediately stop the "dangerous" plan, but the leftist environmentalist president went ahead with this scuttle plan. Previously it had been thought to scrap the ship in Turkey in an environmentally sound way and obtain thousands of tons of ferrous metal, but the tow to the Mediterranean was deemed too dangerous.
Sao Paulo entered service as the French aircraft carrier "Foch", "Clemenceau" class, in 1959 and was handed over to Brazil in 2000, after 40 years in French service.
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The article The Brazilian ecological president Lula sinks a ship full of asbestos and toxic products in the Atlantic comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-presidente-ecologista-brasiliano-lula-affonda-una-portarei-piena-di-amianto-e-prodotti-tossici-nellatlantico/ on Sun, 05 Feb 2023 10:41:01 +0000.