Posts tagged pollution
Call It What It Is: Energy of Mass Extinction
Mar 11th
by JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
It’s time for the public to start calling 19th century barbaric fossil fuels what it is: Energy of Mass Extinction. Dirty energy companies, including nuclear power plants, have been owned by a few rich white families from the start, which is why production of energy has remained in the Dark Ages even though clean renewable energy could have lit up the world easily, cheaply and without pollution twenty years ago. Given the latest advances in green energy technology, there’s absolutely no excuse for not legislating rapid shifts to clean energy by 2020.
Instead, world leaders, primarily the US government, not only serve as “barriers” to the advancement of green energy, they’re the fossil fuel industry’s sleaziest salesmen on earth: Big Oil pays for their seats on the Hill for the sole purpose of selling Energy of Mass Extinction to world markets. Oil executives are given an open door invitation to the White House any time and day of the week.
By contrast, lawyers that represent the public’s welfare and our environment are not welcomed, or they are put on a long waiting list. In short, the oil oligarchs operate from the White House where the polluters meet and draw up their plans. Judges are also owned by the oil firms. For example, read Buzzflash editor at Truthout Mark Karlin’s recent commentary about a federal judge that blocked U.S. courts from being used to collect a $9 billion Ecuadorean judgment against Chevron for turning a beautiful rainforest into a putrid toxic waste dump Thanks to a thoroughly corrupt US government, another victory for Chevron’s oil tyrants who don’t have to clean up the toxic sludge they leave behind after they’ve contaminated everything in sight for Energy of Mass Extinction.
In order to understand Obama’s plans for Energy of Mass Extinction, it’s worth reading two articles that appeared in the Rolling Stone: How the U.S. Exports Global Warming by Tim Dickinson. While Obama talks about shifting to a clean, green future, behind closed doors, he and his rich oil friends are selling tar-sands oil, black gunk refined to crude known as petroleum coke, which is denser and dirtier than burning coal—to world markets, mostly to China and Asian markets because it’s cheap fuel.
Too bad China won’t tell Obama to take his filthy tar-sands and shove it you know where, and that they’ll meet their energy demands with their advanced solar and wind technologies. But unfortunately, they’re buying it. And as long as there’s a demand, we will be doomed by these horrific decisions made by world leaders. Incidentally, “Hillary Clinton is even more supportive of the dirty-energy trade than the Obama White House.”
The second piece is Matt Taibbi’s The Vampire Squid Strikes Again. Thanks to deregulation going back to the Glass-Steagall Act under President Clinton, accelerated by Republican, Phil Gramm, banks have gone beyond financing dirty fossil fuel industries: they’re buying everything associated with the production of Energy of Mass Extinction for big profits.
When you read these two pieces together, you get a clear understanding of how oil firms, Wall St and the US government are buying and selling Energy of Mass Extinction in a blinding wheel of addiction to money while the earth is going up in flames. These people wouldn’t know a Redwood from a Palm tree. They’re completely divorced from nature. They are exactly what T.S. Eliot meant by the Hollow Men.
Meanwhile, in Washington D.C. hundreds of students are being arrested in front of the White House to protest against the Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline. Although these kids stepped over the line deliberately to get arrested for the sake of drawing attention to tar-sands Energy of Mass Extinction, to my mind, they were arrested to protect the oil industry.
While these kids are going to jail for trying to save a beautiful planet that is doomed from man-made pollution, the oil criminals continue to poison our drinking water, oceans, rivers, lands, and our air at mass levels of destruction. Are they getting arrested? No, they’re being wined and dined at the White House. As for the oil-owned media, as Buzzflash editor, Mark Karlin, pointed out, a huge, oil-funded PR campaign has been launched to push Obama’s approval of the northern Keystone leg from Alberta, Canada to the southern Keystone pipeline for delivery to the Gulf where it will be sold to China and Asian markets.
For example, it was disconcerting to see that HuffingtonPost Green published Warren Buffet’s cheerleading article for the Keystone pipeline. It’s one thing to post it in the business section, but to promote Buffet’s big push for the worst carbon emitting pollution on earth in the environmental section seemed terribly hypocritical at HuffPost Green. There’s one significant point that Buffet failed to mention in his article: that he plans to profit from his investment in the Keystone tar-sands pipeline. That’s how PR works: convince the public that oil (tar-sands) is good for them, when in fact, it only benefits a few billionaires like Buffet at the expense of life as we know it.
In my last Buzzflash-Truthout commentary, Who’s to Blame for Recurring Chemical & Oil Disasters, I made a reference to Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, The Sixth Extinction. Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker and also the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe. In The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert explains how our use of fossil fuels and the effects of climate change are creating a mass extinction of the planet. “We are effectively undoing the beauty and the variety and the richness of the world which has taken tens of millions of years to reach,” said Kolbert on a NPR Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross.
That’s why it’s important for the public to call dirty energy what it is: Energy of Mass Extinction; it’s a barbaric fuel that is sucking the life and light from our Planet Earth.
Dirty Energy is the real Weapon of Mass Destruction. These ruthless monsters are not going to change their ways as long as they can profit by the billions from annihilating the earth. Therefore, we must all make an effort to stop using and buying these deadly products to the best of our abilities. That’s what’s happening in Hawaii. Residents are opting out of the grid for solar and by doing so, making it impossible for the antiquated utility company (HECO) to stay alive. Read Hawaii’s top renewable energy advocate Henry Curtis’ piece U.S. Utilities Face Impending Doom with the Rise of Cheap Solar.
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Jacqueline Marcus is a contributing guest writer for Buzzflash at Truthout.org; she’s the editor ofForPoetry.com and EnvironmentalPress.com and author of Close to the Shore by Michigan State University Press. Her E-book, Man Cannot Live on Oil, Alone: Time to end our dependency on oil before it ends us, is available at Kindle Books.
Polar bears are already drowning in climate change
Mar 4th
http://youtu.be/IDt3a21sa-g
Population Size Declines In southern portions of their range, like Hudson Bay, Canada, there is no sea ice during the summer, and the polar bears must live on land until the Bay freezes in the fall, whereupon they can again hunt on the ice. While on land during the summer, these bears eat little or nothing. In just 20 years the ice-free period in Hudson Bay has increased by an average of 20 days, cutting short polar bears’ seal hunting season by nearly three weeks. The ice is freezing later in the fall, but it is the earlier spring ice melt that is especially difficult for the bears. They have a narrower timeframe in which to hunt during the critical season when seal pups are born.
As a result, average bear weight has dropped by 15 percent, causing reproduction rates to decline. The Hudson Bay population is down more than 20 percent. Retreating Sea Ice Platforms The retreat of ice has implications beyond the obvious habitat loss. Remaining ice is farther from shore, making it less accessible. The larger gap of open water between the ice and land also contributes to rougher wave conditions, making the bears’ swim from shore to sea ice more hazardous. In 2004, biologists discovered four drowned polar bears in the Beaufort Sea, and suspect the actual number of drowned bears may have been considerably greater. Never before observed, biologists attributed the drowning to a combination of retreating ice and rougher seas.
- FEATURED LINKS How are polar bears handling one of the lowest sea ice years on record? Science Solid: America’s Polar Bears on Thin Ice
Scarcity of Food Exacerbating the problems of the loss of hunting areas, it is expected that the shrinking polar ice cap will also cause a decline in polar bears’ prey — seals. The reduction in ice platforms near productive areas for the fish that the seals eat affects their nutritional status and reproduction rates. Polar bears are going hungry for longer periods of time, resulting in cannibalistic behavior. Although it has long been known polar bears will kill for dominance or kill cubs so they can breed with the female, outright predation for food was previously unobserved by biologists. Polar Bear Status In 2008, the polar bear was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act primarily because of the decline of its primary habitat: sea ice. The Secretary of Interior listed the polar bear as threatened but restricted the Endangered Species Act’s protections and thus the polar bear’s future is still very much in jeopardy. The polar bear is the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” of the serious threat global warming poses to wildlife species around the world, unless we take immediate and significant action to reduce global warming pollution.
Tran Pacific Partnership like NAFTA on Steroids
Feb 20th
Tell Rep. Polis to Stop the TPP! At Rep. Jared Polis’ office, 4770 Baseline Rd., #220, Boulder 11:00 AM
What’s not to like under free trade? How about a staggering $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada and the related loss of 1 million net U.S. jobs under NAFTA, growing income inequality, displacement of more than one million Mexican campesino farmers and a doubling of desperate immigration from Mexico, and more than $360 million paid to corporations after “investor-state” tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies.
Now the Obama administration–so concerned with “good jobs” for Americans, wants trade deals with East and Southeast Asian countries, where wages are as little as $ .25/hr. And he wants it fast. A broad coalition
of Congress isn’t supporting the TPP, but good ol’ liberal Rep. Jared Polis, D-CO isn’t one of them.
We need to pressure Representative Jared Polis to commit publicly himself to vote no on a TPP fast track. He has not made public statements vowing to vote no on the fast track and we consider his vote critical, especially since the Republicans are targeting newer representatives to urge them to approve it. We have a couple great weapons in our arsenal – signatures on a SignOn petition asking him to reject the fast track and our physical presence in his office while he is are home- so let’s use them to convince him that we are watching and waiting for him to show support for their constituents, not the corporations. MoveOn, as part of a coalition of progressives from Occupy Denver, Food and Water Watch, the Sierra Club, and Communications Workers of America will go to his Boulder office to deliver petitions and a letter this Thursday, Feb. 20. We will show him that we want him to represent us by taking a stand against the multinational corporations and the destructive TPP.
We urge everyone who can to join us for a show of strength and determination to stop the TPP fast track. This is a very critical issue that would negatively affect our economy, environment, workers’ rights, prescription drug availability, internet freedom, and much more. If you need more information, go to www.flushthetpp.org or www.stopthetpp.org. Then join us and exercise your right to representation, then to celebrate with us when we stop this intended corporate coup. Sign up here and get more details. Message from host:
For participants: : We will meet at Jared Polis’s office 4770 Baseline Rd., #220, Boulder 80303 at 11:00 a.m. We will bring talking points and a letter. All you need to do is join us. Later in the day, some of us will go to Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s office at 12600 W. Colfax Ave., Suite B-400, Lakewood, CO 80215 to deliver petition signatures and a thank you letter. You are invited to join us. He was leaning toward voting for the fast track until we made a lot of phone calls telling him that we the people do not approve of this and would never re elect him. He has now publicly stated that he will vote no on the fast track.
RSVP at http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=140717&id=91301-5272516-M2tTGsx&t=3
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Thursday, February 20th, 2014
Powering The U.S. With Wind, Water, and Solar Power For All Purposes
Mark Z. Jacobson
Director of the Atmosphere Energy Program, Stanford University
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Bechtel Collaboratory
Discovery Learning Center
Engineering Dr, CU, Boulder
Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the most significant problems facing the world today. This talk discusses the development of technical and economic plans to convert the energy infrastructure of each of the 50 United States to those powered by 100% wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) for all purposes, including electricity, transportation, industry, and heating/cooling, after energy efficiency measures are accounted for.
The plans call for ~80% conversion by 2030 and 100% by 2050 through aggressive policy measures and natural transition. Wind and solar resources, footprint and spacing areas required, jobs created, costs, air pollution mortality and climate cost reductions, methods of ensuring reliability of the grid, and impacts of offshore wind farms on hurricane dissipation are discussed.
More information can be found here: www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susenergy2030.html
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Colorado Community Rights Network Presents:
COCRN.org ~ Facebook.com/COCommunityRights ~ Twitter.com/COCommRights Flier attached, feel free to print and distribute
1. Democracy School with Thomas LInzey
Friday, March 7, 6:30 – 9:30 pm Saturday, March 8, 9 am – 5 pm
First Unitarian Society of Denver, 1400 Lafayette St., Denver, CO 80218
Seating Limited ~ $125 if payment postmarked by February 26; $150 thereafter based on availability
Mail payment:
17087 E. 106th Ave., Commerce City, CO 80022 Make check out to Colorado Community Rights Network Limited scholarships available, contact COCommRights@gmail.com
2. Statewide Activist Strategy Session
Sunday, March 9, 9 am – 3 pm
RSVP to COCommRights@gmail.com ~ Location TBA
This or previous Democracy School (full, not mini) a prerequisite for attendance
Communities throughout Colorado and across the country are finding that, in the face of corporate exploitation, they don’t have full authority to protect public health, safety and welfare, economic and environmental sustainability, property value, and overall quality of life.
Corporations have court-conferred constitutional rights which they wield against communities to subjugate local rights that interfere with corporate expansion. Furthermore, corporate rights are defended by the state and federal government through the doctrine of preemption.
Citizens of five Front Range cities voted recently to ban or place a moratorium on fracking in their communities. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association, with the state’s support, is suing to overturn these elections. Local rights have been suppressed by other industries in towns and counties throughout the state.
The immortal words of the Declaration of Independence are regarded as a moral standard upon which our freedom was founded and to which we continue to strive: people are endowed with certain unalienable rights, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” among them; government derives its power from the consent of the governed; and when any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
Today, our structure of law elevates corporate rights over the unalienable rights of citizens and usurps the consent of the governed.
To reclaim our rights, we must challenge corporate supremacy & change our structure of law that upholds it. Democracy School teaches you how.
Thomas Linzey, Executive Director and Chief Counsel for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, has over 15 years experience helping communities protect their health and quality of life in the face of corporate exploitation.
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