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.”
Oil vs. ‘Morning in America’
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Brent Budowsky: Let’s challenge the speculative fever and vulture frenzy that threatens the Morning in America that is coming. The president should initiate a drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if necessary twice, to burn the fear of God into the soul of speculators.
The Gas Wars
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Robert Reich: Nothing drives voter sentiment like the price of gas – now averaging $3.56 a gallon, up 30 cents from the start of the year. It’s already hit $4 in some places. The last time gas topped $4 was 2008.
No War for Oil
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Ivan Eland: Could it be that the U.S. is not aggressively employing military power to ensure that it has oil supplies—as the Imperial Japanese did before and during World War II—but is instead using the threat of armed force to keep a thumb on the oil lifelines of other nations.
The Remarkable Political Stupidity of the Street
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Robert Reich: Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It should have welcomed new financial regulation as a means of restoring public trust. Instead, it’s busily shredding new regulations and making the public more distrustful than ever.
Thoughts That Occupy My Mind
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William Blum: Those young people, and the old ones as well, keep surprising me, with their dedication and energy, their camaraderie and courage, their optimism and innovation, their non-violence and their keen awareness of the danger of being co-opted their focusing on the economic institutions more than on the politicians or political parties.
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
Green Industry Has Failed? Tell That to the Marines!
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Mario Rivas: You tell the Marines that the green revolution has failed and they’ll tell you that the Marines don’t know how to fail.
Netroots at Crossroads in Minneapolis This Weekend
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Paul Hogarth: I look forward to this Conference as a way of re-engaging in the national struggle, and harnessing the energy everyone with a Wi-Fi connection can take to fight for progressive change.
The Oil Company Gusher
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Robert Reich: This gusher is an embarrassment for an industry seeking to keep its $4 billion annual tax subsidy from the U.S. government, at a time when we’re cutting social programs to reduce the budget deficit.
Reconsidering the Nuclear Power Industry Bailout
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Tracy Emblem: the United States should consider phasing out its nuclear power plants over the next generation and begin investing in other safer renewable energy sources. We can lead the world in clean energy technology.
Safety on the Cheap
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Robert Reich: G.E. marketed the Mark 1 boiling water reactors, used in TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, as cheaper to build than other reactors because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure.
Solar Peace, or Blood for Oil: The Need to Broaden the Peace Movement
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Tom Hayden: In his State of the Union address, President Obama opened a door through which the peace, labor and environmental movements should march, towards an energy future not dependent on resource wars.
Transition Initiative: Feeding Ourselves Tomorrow
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Robert Haw: Climate change is fact. It will bring us great misery if fossil fuel use continues unabated. Perhaps a better name for the phenomena unfolding around us is climate chaos, because “a climate” (as we define it) will no longer exist.
The BP Oil Spill Saga: Where Things Stand Now
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Marian Wang: Many questions remain unanswered about the long-term health and environmental effects of the crude oil and the unprecedented amount of dispersant, chemicals BP used to break down the thick crude. Both BP and the government have committed funding for continued study of these issues.
So What Happened to Global Warming?
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Patrick Henningsen: Britain and Europe have been hit hard for the third straight record-breaking winter season. Labeled by experts as the coldest winter in 100 years and set to blow well into 2011, it is already raising some very interesting questions about the new ideological split we are witnessing throughout society in the much celebrated green debate.
Public Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free World
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Lawrence S. Wittner: One of the ironies of the current international situation is that, although some government leaders now talk of building a nuclear weapons-free world, there has been limited public mobilization around that goal—at least compared to the action-packed 1980s.
On 10-10-10 Fight Big Oil and Big Coal
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Lauren Steiner: Stand up and be counted at rallies and public hearings. Make telephone calls, sign petitions and write letters to public officials and newspapers and get your friends to do the same. Like Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” There is so much you can do. Learn more here.
DREAM Act Delayed in the Senate, But DREAMers Continue
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Seth Hoy: Maybe Congressional promises to keep fighting for the DREAM Act are enough; maybe they aren’t. But what the DREAMers can take heart in is the energy and enthusiasm they reverberated through the Senate this week.
Fatal Pipeline Accident Turns Attention to Nation’s Aging Pipelines
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Marian Wang: More than 60 percent of the nation’s gas pipelines are 40 years or older, AP reports. And age isn’t the only issue. Older pipelines are often configured in such a way that they’re unable to accommodate the latest pipeline safety technology.
Californians Need to Say NO to Big Oil
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Tracy Emblem: Implementing clean energy in California now – not twenty years from now – is a not only a public health issue — it’s a matter of economic survival.
Obama Admin: No More Regulatory Shortcuts for Deepwater Drilling Projects
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Marian Wang: The Obama administration announced Monday that it is no longer fast-tracking offshore drilling projects in deep water by exempting them from detailed environmental review.
Baby Steps in Plastic Bags
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Dick Price: But what if all hundred people at my workplace followed suit? That’s 50,000 plastic bags per year that wouldn’t be fouling the environment. Or the 800 members of my church? Another 400,000 bags not killing wildlife. All 10 million LA County residents? Five billion bags. All Californians? That’s 19 billion bags—and now e’re waist deep in the Big Plastic.
Peak Oil 101
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Adam Eran: The acute problem of the Gulf oil spill makes the cost of corruption-afflicted government front page news. Lax Federal offshore drilling oversight under Bush 43 has cost us dearly. However, our society’s vulnerability to any trouble with this critical resource should also remind us of the chronic problem: peak oil.
Stormy Weather
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In early February 2008 , the world’s leading scientific body on global warming issued its latest report confirming what many of us have suspected: either we do something profound about greenhouse emissions or we will make our planet uninhabitable, if not for ourselves and our children, then for their children and the generations that might [...]
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Friday Feedback: Freedom from Fossil Fuels
Friday Feedback: The “fact” is we cannot wean ourselves from fossil fuel because there is nothing to replace it in terms of scalability. It is woven into the fabric of almost every aspect of our existence.