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Montanans rally against mega-loads to the tar sands
Activists in Montana and Idaho are fighting back against these monstrosities.Iconic authors and outdoorsmen David James Duncan and Rick Bass have an important new book that they wrote in response to the notorious “haul” this month of gargantuan machines (“mega-loads”) to Alberta, Canada, constructed in South Korea for use in the tar sands. Besides the […]
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The Climate Post: Tension over Middle East oil
Will Gaddafi sabotage Libya’s oil pipelines to spite protesters?Photo: Crethi PlethiOver the past week, the unrest in the Middle East deepened, with growing protests in Bahrain and Libya, and more draconian measures by the countries’ leaders to quash the opposition. Libya is a significant oil exporter, and the first member of the Organization of the […]
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Meet the members of Congress who sided with corporate polluters over children and your health
May not be safe to enter.Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. For the first time in the 40 year history of the Clean Air Act, a majority of the House of Representatives has voted to block EPA from implementing and enforcing standards to sharply reduce mercury and other toxic air emissions from a polluting […]
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Guy who punked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is running for Congress as Green Party candidate
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} The story of Ian Murphy — the editor of the Buffalo Beast who convinced Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) that he was billionaire David Koch and then recorded their union-bashing, possibly illegal phone conversation — just keeps getting better. Murphy just revealed to Samantha Henig of […]
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Male-dominated Big Ag woos women with paternalistic marketing blitz
Marketing campaigns aside, the face of industrial-scale farming is male. Big Ag is big business — and big profits. And when anyone raises questions about the billions of tax dollars lavished on the largest industrial growers of corn, soybeans, and other commodity crops or points out the harm that these perverse incentives do to the […]
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Big Oil lobby announces it will start donating directly to candidates
Apparently their current amount of influence isn’t good enough.Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. The American Petroleum Institute (API), Big Oil’s chief lobbying organization, will start directly backing political candidates in the second quarter of this year. API, whose membership includes oil giants like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, already spends tens of millions of dollars every year on […]
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Why do people in cars hate people on bikes so much?
If you’ve ever been behind the wheel of a car, you’ve felt it: The dead certainty that everyone around you is a complete idiot who should get the hell out of your way. If you’ve spent much time riding a bicycle, you have been the target of that wrath. And without the protective metal-and-glass bubble […]
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Why it’s hard to make polluters pay for their own messes
Scoffing at the idea of externalities is a lot easier when wearing a gas mask.Industrial boilers and incinerators currently receive an enormous public subsidy. They emit toxic air pollutants like mercury, cadmium, and acid gases, which even in extremely small amounts cause a range of health maladies from asthma to heart attacks to premature death, […]
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Scientist: 75 percent of coral reefs are threatened — but there’s hope!
Bleached coral in waters off Phuket, Thailand.Photo: AeyseaCross-posted from Cool Green Science As anyone who’s ever snorkeled off of a Caribbean island knows, coral reefs are strange, beautiful structures housing a dizzying diversity of sea life. Coral reefs occupy less than 1 percent of the ocean floor, but provide habitat for as much as a […]
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Half of world’s population could face climate-driven food crisis in second half of the century
[I’m on travel, so I’m updating this timely 2009 post on food insecurity.] The quote above is the powerful final sentence from a 2009 study in Science, “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat.” The University of Washington news release release explained: Rapidly warming climate is likely to seriously alter crop yields […]
