Jackie Cornejo: When the 405 was closed last year, air quality near the 10-mile portion of the freeway reached levels that were 83 percent better than on a typical L.A. weekend.
Running Out of Energy
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Steve Hochstadt: Maintaining our wasteful national lifestyle and relying on underground sources of energy means watching other nations take the lead toward an affordable energy future.
Koch Brothers Love Prop 32
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Matt Fleischer: Despite their reputations as libertarian true believers, the Koch brothers are nothing if not practical businessmen, who have no trouble taking advantage of government subsidies when it bolsters their bottom line.
Dealing with Garbage
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Steve Hochstadt: Nobody who comes to my home smokes. But cigarette butts litter the ground near the curb and the sidewalk in front of my house. If you multiply those butts by every building in town, thousands of acts of littering, constantly repeated, are dirtying our town.
Fifty Years After Silent Spring, Let’s Not Roll Back Environmental Protections
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Nancy Unger: The movement to ban harmful pesticides began in earnest 50 years ago this month with the publication of Rachel Carson’s bestselling exposé, Silent Spring. Now in 2012 some Republicans are seeking to roll back environmental protections and pesticide regulations.
Why Genetically Modified Foods Should Be Labeled
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Carole Bartolotto: Do we really want to irreversibly change the face of plant life with unknown consequences for the monetary benefit of a few large corporations and their investors?
Isaac Devastates Louisiana’s Grand Bayou, Yet Again
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Georgianne Nienaber: Yesterday, Ruby Ancar of the Atakapa-Ishak Tribe on Grand Bayou, Louisiana, lost her home to the storm surge of Hurricane Isaac seven years to the day after losing all to Hurricane Katrina. It is all “uncalled for.”
Obama’s Big Green Building Blocks
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Tom Hayden: Perhaps a deeper problem is the chronic culture of Washington and elite think-tanks, which has fostered a preference for neo-liberalism, and against New Deal state intervention, across partisan lines, from staffers up to decision-makers.
Sacred Native Site Pe’Sla Threatened
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Georgianne Nienaber: In a race against the clock, the Sioux Nation is fighting to save Pe’ Sla, one of its most sacred religious sites.
California State Parks Director Resigns Amid $54 Million Scandal
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Dan Bacher: For at least 12 years, the Department underreported tens of millions of dollars to the state Department of Finance, according to a statement from the Natural Resources Agency.
A Buck and a Shower a Watt for Your Electricity
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Soctt Peer: For a typical Los Angeles utility user, it turns out that using one watt continuously for one year costs about one dollar. Hence the “Buck A Watt” name.
Pennsylvania Politics Continues to Trump Health and the Environment
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Walter Brasch: Why do Pennsylvania Republican leaders support a state law that discriminates against the rural counties, while supporting a special exemption that protects the the urban and suburban counties where many of the state’s most powerful and wealthiest constituents live.
The Ghost Dance
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It was said that if the dance was done with extreme precision and adherence to ritual, the oppression would stop. Wild game would return, and a new age would ensue. Sometimes a swirling trance was conjured, but this only increased the oppression.
Culver City to the Inglewood Oil Fields: Frack You!
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Diane Lefer: If the seven planned meetings help build a movement, the voices of so many citizens may help the legislature and governor find the political will to resist oil industry demands.
Global Warming: What We Don’t Know
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Steve Hochstadt: Most of us know so little about how a climate works and how it might change that we must rely on distant experts to tell us what is going on and what might happen in the future.
Let’s Build That Pipeline
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Clifford “Felonius Ax” Tasner: The Keystone Pipeline “could” create over a half a million jobs if it leaks, just trying to clean up the Oglala Aquifer that provides 30% of America’s water.
Fracking: Collateral Damage in the Marcellus Shale
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Walter Brasch: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania—armed with an industry-favorable law recently rammed through by the Republican-controlled legislature and eagerly signed by a first-term Republican governor who received more than $1,6 million in campaign contributions from the energy industry—has decided that fracking the earth, threatening health and the environment, is far better for business than taking care of the people. Here’s how that approach hurts Pennsylvania’s average Joes.
Fracking: Corruption a Part of Pennsylvania’s Heritage
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Walter Brasch: Mixed into the state’s energy production is not only a symbiotic relationship of business and government, but a history of corruption and influence-peddling.
Fracking: Health, Environmental Impact Greater Than Claimed
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Walter Brasch: What is the connection between fracking, the environment and health? Research “strongly implicates exposure to gas drilling operations in serious health effects on humans, companion animals, livestock, horses, and wildlife.”
Fracking: Pennsylvania Gags Physicians
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Walter Brasch: A new Pennsylvania law endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing.
Where’s the Sacrifice?
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Madeline Janis: Imagine if our government sponsored ads now likening riding alone in a car to taking a big old diesel engine, and dropping it onto the Alaskan wilderness, or a child’s face?
New Military Specialty: 99xx Alternative Energy Specialist
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Mario Rivas: The Department of Defense has sighted military bases as potential clean energy producers. Military bases could produce as much energy as large-scale nuclear reactors.
Support Sustainability Bill of Rights for Santa Monica
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Santa Monica has worked hard to protect the natural ecosystems that make life possible. It is time for these sustainability goals to be legal, enforceable obligations and not just voluntary intentions.
The Fix Is In: A Tale of Two Bans
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Stephen Box: As community activists continue to fight for a ban on city park advertising, the Mayor is pursuing an overhaul of LA’s sign ordinance that will create “innovative revenue sources” such as wilderness advertising.
On the Trail of Trash: Tracking Our Disposable Society
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Sabrina Bornstein: By making this invisible industry visible, Trash | Track is helping bring our trash problem out of the shadows and into public awareness.
How More Recycling Could Boost the Economy
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Sabrina Bornstein: Recycling may be all the rage these days, but here in L.A. and across the country vast amounts of recyclable goods end up in landfills every year.
Mass Appeal: LA’s New Embrace of Public Transit
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Jackie Cornejo: The thing is, when you grow up poor, the idea of taking public transit is a no-brainer. I learned very early that driving was a privilege, and that taking public transit was the only way I would be able to go to school and eventually get to work.
The Fukushima Story You Didn’t Hear on CNN
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Greg Palast: The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I’m not supposed to have. Good thing I’ve kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building
A 51st State for Armed Robotic Drones
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David Swanson: Weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, have their own caucus in Congress, and the Pentagon’s plan is to give them their own state as well.
A Vegetarian Suggestion
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Mark Dempsey: American’s health is so bad that even pre-teens are at risk for type II diabetes in increasing numbers. Cancer, heart disease and obesity stalk the land.
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