No previous civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural supports. Nor will ours. Yet economists look at the future through a different lens. Relying heavily on economic data to measure progress, they see the near 10-fold growth in the world economy since 1950 and the associated gains in living standards as the crowning achievement of our modern civilization. During this period, income per person worldwide climbed nearly fourfold, boosting living standards to previously unimaginable levels. A century ago, annual growth in the world economy was measured in the billions of dollars. Today, it is measured in the trillions. …

...originally posted at GRIP... When the political class focuses on the perils of fossil fuel dependence, they almost always use the word “foreign” before “oil”.  This is redundant.  Oil is inherently foreign.  All of it. Oil is foreign to democracy.  In an election cycle flooded by unrestricted political money, oil money stands out as the biggest gusher.  The Supreme Court struck down Montana's law limiting corporate spending on campaigns yesterday, so the blowout of oil's influence will remain uncapped for the foreseeable future.   In America and around the world, oil and freedom do not mix.  Because it concentrates wealth, facilitates …

All indications are that Dr. Jill Stein will be the U.S. Green Party’s candidate for President when it has a national convention in Baltimore in a few weeks. She has gathered a healthy majority of delegates pledged to vote for her as a result of Green Party state primaries and conventions.

It is a good thing for the planet that the Green Party is about to launch this campaign.

Four years ago John McCain was running against Obama on an “all of the above” platform on energy. This year, the “all of the above” candidate on energy is Barack Obama. In his State of the Union address, he talked approvingly about fracking and the government’s role in the development of the means to get at natural gas in shale rock. He rarely mentions the words “global warming” or “climate change.” He is proud that there is more domestic oil exploration during his administration than during George Bush’s. He held a press conference in Oklahoma endorsing the Oklahoma to Texas section of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. He is opening up the Arctic for oil exploration. And on an international level, since Copenhagen in December 2009, he and his representatives have worked to weaken, not strengthen, international action on climate change, including last week at the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil.

He has also done positive things. He has supported the EPA’s work to regulate carbon pollution and tighten up regulation of other pollutants. His stimulus package in 2009 allocated tens of billions for renewable energy and efficiency programs. He negotiated a deal with US automakers for an increase in fuel efficiency standards for cars. He is taking steps to get an offshore wind industry going. Under severe political pressure from our movement, he did the right thing, kind-of, temporarily, on the Canada to Oklahoma section of the Keystone XL pipeline.

This very mixed record is not the kind of leadership that the planet or its people need. What we need is what Jill Stein has called for and will talk about consistently from now until election day, and beyond: A Green New Deal, and all that goes with it..

“A Green New Deal for America”—that’s the official campaign slogan. And it’s not just words. Jill has a history of giving leadership and taking action on the climate and environmental issues, as can be seen by checking out her bio at http://www.jillstein.org/bio.

Jill’s voice in the next four months will make it more likely that we can force the climate issue into the mass media and the campaigns of Obama and Romney. In the 30 or more states where it is already certain who’s going to win based on past Presidential election results and current polling, Jill will offer a genuinely progressive option with very little risk of affecting the outcome, since it’s not the national popular vote that wins it but the results of 50 separate state votes for the Electoral College.

As far as the “swing states,” I appreciate the concern that many progressives have about a Green Party Presidential campaign hurting Obama and helping Romney. These are concerns that many progressives always have every four years because of the undemocratic, big money-dominated, winner-take-all nature of our political system. That reality, not progressives exercising their right to run a consistently progressive campaign, is the issue we should be concerned about, that we should all be working together on, and not just during a Presidential election year.

Right now, this week, there is something you can do to help strengthen the advancement of the progressive cause within the very difficult arena of our electoral system. You can donate, and urge others to donate, to help Jill Stein meet her federal matching funds objective. If she makes it, every dollar she raises will be matched by another public financing dollar.

Please go to http://www.jillstein.org/donate and support this genuine national leader in our struggle, as she likes to say, to “turn this breaking point into a tipping point.”

P.S. While all donations are valuable, Jill especially needs donations from the following key states to help her reach the required $5,000 per state threshold: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. You can learn more at http://www.jillstein.org/funding.

In a new report on U.S. CLEAN (Clean Local Energy Accessible Now) programs, I provide a comparison of solar CLEAN Contract (feed-in tariff) rates across the United States. Comparing published rates is not particularly helpful, however, because contract lengths vary (from 15 to 25 years) and the solar resource also varies widely.  For international comparisons (e.g. Germany), it's also necessary to account for the currency exchange rate and the federal tax incentives that are routinely factored in to U.S. solar CLEAN prices. Here's a look at the methodology for normalizing the CLEAN rates for comparison, and two maps illustrating those …

Photo courtesy of Save Family Farms.

When the Des Moines Register ran a front-page story last week calling into question the growth of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in the state, it wasn’t environmentalists or animal rights activists who went on record against the facilities. No, the article featured ex-hog farmers who have been vocal in opposing new factory farms, as well as several Iowans who don’t want to see huge facilities -- nor the “poo lagoons” that go along with them -- take over the landscape.

Some 19.7 million pigs are raised in Iowa CAFOs every year, and that number is likely to keep climbing. A chart of livestock construction permits that ran with the Register story certainly projects growth. It reads:

2006...............310
2007.............. 252
2008.............. 218
2009................ 60
2010................. 62
2011................ 132
2012 (by 6/07).. 91

That’s right, after a "slump" in 2009 and 2010, the industry is back to its CAFO-building ways, with 91 permits issued so far this year. And remember, these are not small facilities; according to the Register, each facility contains around 4,400 hogs in two buildings.

Click to embiggen.

Looking at these numbers, it's easy to wonder: How much longer can the state (or the region for that matter) handle this kind of growth? When the nonprofit advocacy group Food and Water Watch created this Factory Farm Map back in 2007, Iowa was already one of the states most saturated with CAFOs (see image). According to the chart above, over 500 CAFOs may have been built since then. Of course not all that growth has to mean new operations -- some permits may be for the expansion of preexisting buildings -- but if even half that number resulted in new facilities, it's a cause for concern.

As world leaders meet in Rio this week, they’ve promised to talk about how they can work together to eradicate poverty. Nothing could be more urgent.

Poverty is not a problem that will just go away. Over the past few decades, we’ve seen science and technology advance beyond anything our grandparents could ever have imagined. Medicine is getting better. Computers are getting faster. Phones are getting smarter. But one thing is getting worse -- the number of our fellow humans who struggle each day just to meet their most basic needs.

By the last count, a staggering 1.4 billion people around the globe are living in extreme poverty. And while the U.S. may be a wealthy nation, we aren’t immune to poverty. Too many of our friends and neighbors are fighting just to get by. One in five American children live in homes that struggle to put food on the table -- we’re talking about 16.2 million American kids [PDF] who can’t count on a meal every day. That’s not right.

And the shocking truth is that most of us in this country will live in poverty at some point during our lives. This is not somebody else’s problem.

We need our leaders to create long-term solutions that will wipe out hunger and poverty for good -- here in the U.S., and across the globe.

The farm bill passed the Senate! The farm bill passed the Senate!

We don't get to say this very often, so forgive our enthusiasm. The bill is a massive piece of legislation passed by Congress every five years (or so), so we get excited about it while we can. An expenditure of about $100 billion a year, it touches nearly every part of our food system. Food stamps? Farm bill. Subsidies to the sugar industry? Farm bill. Insurance for failed crops? Farm bill.

Or, at least, those things all were in the bill. The version that passed the Senate today nearly 2-to-1 is a mixed bag -- with a few bright spots. It leaves sugar subsidies in place, while revamping assistance to farmers in a way that benefits Big Ag. Food stamps (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) took a hit, but it could have been worse.

Okay, it will probably get worse. When the House considers what to include in the legislation (a process that is still a few weeks away), it's highly unlikely that the balance of cuts will be the same, and SNAP will probably bear the brunt.

Last week, we presented a list of five amendments worth keeping an eye on. Here's how they fared.

Dave Roberts and others have been talking about leaving coal in the ground.  That got me thinking:  What’s it worth there? The question looms large in light of recent and imminent federal leases to extract a bazillion tons of coal from public land in the Powder River Basin (PRB).  Critics of the practice note that Americans are being compensated for this public resource at well below its market value. But if you don't happen to be in the coal business, the market value of coal-to-burn pales in comparison to the vital functions of coal-in-the-ground (hereafter, "coal ITG"). Undisturbed coal delivers …

Coal ash from the Tennessee spill.

One of the core tenets of the environmental justice movement is that poorer communities and communities of color disproportionately bear the negative impacts of a pollution-rife economy. Power plants and water treatment centers aren't built in affluent areas.

Now, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being asked to decide if the location of a landfill is a violation of a predominantly black community's civil rights.

In 2011, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (DEM) renewed the permit for a landfill in Uniontown, Ala. The Arrowhead landfill is authorized to receive more solid waste per day than any other landfill in the state -- waste that includes coal ash, toxic residue from coal-burning power plants. Four million tons of ash from Tennessee's 2008 Kingston power plant spill ended up at Arrowhead.

This January, residents filed a complaint with the EPA, arguing that the renewal of the permit was a discriminatory violation of the Civil Rights Act. From a report at the Huffington Post:

The Uniontown facility has been the focus of a long and contentious battle between the mostly black residents living nearby and the developers of the landfill, which opened for receipt of municipal waste and other trash in 2007. The facility is currently permitted to receive up to 15,000 daily tons of municipal, industrial, commercial and construction waste -- as well as "special waste" like coal ash -- from nearly three dozen states.

Taken in aggregate, the civil rights complaint argues, the population of that expansive service area is predominantly white, while the population bordering the landfill is nearly 100 percent African American.

The Earth Summit in Rio begins today. What's that? You thought it started weeks ago? Very understandable.

You can watch the plenary sessions here, or streaming below.

Later today, 17 year-old Brittany Trilford will speak to the assembly. (You can read Greg Hanscom's interview with her here.) We'll update this post after she does.