JOE ROMM – Humanity is choosing to destroy a livable climate, warn 18 of the world’s leading climate experts in a new study. Led by James Hansen, they make the strongest case to date for a target of 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the air, or about 1°C (1.8°F) total warming.
Category: Big Picture
Climate Scientists: “We Have to Consume Less”
KEVIN ANDERSON and ALICE BOWS-LARKIN, interviewed by AMY GOODMAN – A pair of climate scientists are calling for what some may view as a shocking solution to the global warming crisis: a rethinking of the economic order in the United States and other industrialized nations. Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin of the influential Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in England say many of the solutions proposed by world leaders to prevent “runaway global warming” will not be enough to address the scale of the crisis. They have called for “radical and immediate de-growth strategies in the United States, EU and other wealthy nations.”
Dave Barry’s Holiday Gift Guide
DAVE BARRY – The holidays are a wonderful time of year, but too often, in all the excitement and craziness, we forget the real “reason for the season.†The holidays are not about parties, or decorations, or Frosty the Snowperson. Those things are fun, but they are not the true purpose of the holidays. The true purpose of the holidays is to purchase consumer electronics.
Oregon Reps Oppose Fast Track Trade Negotiations
THE LINCOLN COUNTY DISPATCH – Wednesday, 13 November 2013 14:26: Fair trade advocates praised the release of a letter today voicing congressional opposition to fast track, a policy-making process that allows trade pacts to circumvent ordinary congressional review, amendment and debate procedures. Three quarters of the House Democratic caucus—including Oregon congressional representatives Kurt Schrader and Peter DeFazio—signed the Nov. 13 letter. Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Suzanne Bonamici signed onto another letter signaling concerns over fast track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Absence of Global Climate Agreement Threatens Promising Carbon Reduction Scheme
SUSANNA TWIDALE – Investors and the panel overseeing the U.N.’s carbon market for developing countries have called on delegates at next month’s climate meeting in Warsaw to rescue the ailing scheme, which the U.N. estimates has provided $315 billion in funding to low-carbon projects to date.
Obama Approves Raising Permissible Levels of Nuclear Radiation in Drinking Water
PUBLIC EMPLOYEES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY – The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following “radiological incidents,†such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs. The final version, slated for Federal Register publication, is a win for the nuclear industry which seeks what its proponents call a “new normal†for radiation exposure among the U.S population, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
Today Peabody Would Lose Money on Coal Exports
CLARK WILLIAMS-DERRY – On Oct. 22, 2013, Sightline released a new report: Peabody Energy, Gateway Pacific, and the Asian Coal Bubble. The report shows that at today’s prices, there’s no way for Peabody to make money shipping coal to Asia. Peabody’s strategy is now to hope that the Asian coal bubble re-inflates—which is an increasingly risky bet, given the collapse of Asian coal prices, recent steps by China to curb coal demand, and the oversupply of coal from other Pacific Rim exporters.
Is Stable Climate a Thing of the Past?
DORSI DIAZ – The climate is indeed changing – and rapidly. So fast that it’s startling even climate scientists and blowing previous “computer modelings” out the window.
Unclean at Any Speed
OZZIE ZEHNER – Electric cars don’t solve the automobile’s environmental problems. Note: Although we at The PeaceWorker are electric vehicle fans, this article raises many good questions that EV buffs need to consider. We run it in the interests of fairness and useful dialogue.
Fight Back – Know What They Don’t Want You to Know
LAURA POITRAS – The detention of David Miranda — partner of the Guardian journalist
involved in the NSA revelations — and the destruction of hard drives in the British newspaper’s basement reveal one thing: Governments do not want their citizens to be informed when it comes to the topic of surveillance.
Poll: Small Business Owners Support Progressive Policies
STEPHEN MICHAEL – On August 19, 2013, the Main Street Alliance of Oregon released their most recent report, Voices of Main Street, which challenges conventional perceptions of rural small business owners’ thoughts on key policy issues. It details responding business owners’ views on economic, tax, immigration and health care issues facing Oregon and the nation.
Something in the Air: Lead Poisoning from Aircraft Fuel
MICHAEL BEHAR – The health risks of leaded gasoline are a thing of the past, right? Wrong. While jets and turboprops run on kerosene-based fuels, the majority of general aviation aircraft are piston-powered and consume aviation gasoline, or avgas. Populations close to “general aviation†airports (a term that covers nearly all types of flight activity except scheduled commercial passenger service) suffer the consequences of exposure to the lead in avgas.
Health Co-Ops Pave the Way for Change in Oregon
CHRIS THOMAS – In less than two months, Oregonians who need to shop for health coverage will be able to find and compare plans in the new health insurance marketplace, called Cover Oregon.
New Waste Slashing Energy Legislation Promises Savings, Jobs
AMERICAN COUNCIL FOR AN ENERGY-EFFICIENT ECONOMY (ACEEE) – Proposed bipartisan energy efficiency legislation has the potential to save the nation billions while creating domestic jobs and reducing energy waste, according to a new analysis released today by ACEEE.
New Poll Suggests Climate Change Action Strategy
A report from ecoAmerica outlines how public opinion trends around climate change in the U.S. have moved from being a niche issue to the mainstream.
New Material May Make Solar Power “Dirt Cheapâ€
KEVIN BULLIS – A new type of solar cell, made from a material that is dramatically cheaper to obtain and use than silicon, could generate as much power as today’s commodity solar cells.
New NSA Revelation – Spying Goes Beyond Metadata
JAMES BALL and SPENCER ACKERMAN – The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens’ email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.
New Company Earns B Corps Certification
SARA SCHNEIDER – Notogroup, a Portland-based, national executive search firm, has been awarded B Corp certification after undergoing a comprehensive examination of its business practices, by the nonprofit B Lab. Companies that are designated B Corps meet high standards for social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.
Schrader Unveils Bipartisan Government Reform Package
KURT SCHRADER – No Labels and Congressional Problem Solvers are providing some of the only forums in Washington for Members on opposite sides of the aisle to sit down with one another and work through issues that ordinarily push us far apart. Among other efforts, the bipartisan group of Problem Solvers is unveiling a comprehensive legislative package to make government work more effectively.
Snowden Seen as Whistle-Blower by Majority in New Poll
JONATHAN D. SALANT – A majority of U.S. registered voters consider Edward Snowden a whistle-blower, not a traitor, and a plurality says government anti-terrorism efforts have gone too far in restricting civil liberties, a poll released recently shows.
Statistics Show Nonviolence Works – Here’s How
INTERVIEW BY TERRY MESSMAN – Erica Chenoweth and her co-author, Maria Stephan, reveal in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works, that during the period of 1900 to 2006, nonviolent resistance campaigns are about twice as effective as violent ones in achieving their immediate goals of either regime change or territorial change. They also found that these trends hold even under conditions where most people expect nonviolent resistance to be ineffective.
Nonviolent campaigns were effective, for instance, against dictatorships; against highly repressive regimes that are using violent and brutal repression against the movements; and also in places where people would expect a nonviolent campaign to be impossible to even emerge in the first place — such as very closed societies with no civil society organization to speak of prior to the onset of the campaign.
Chenoweth conducted her research because of the skepticism that a lot of people have about the efficacy of nonviolence in these circumstances. In most of the violent insurgencies we look at, people will say the reason they are violent is because nonviolent resistance can’t work in these conditions. This is why it’s particularly striking that even in these types of conflicts, we’re seeing nonviolence resistance outperform so dramatically.
‘The real threat to our future is peak water’
LESTER BROWN – Peak oil has generated headlines in recent years, but the real threat to our future is peak water. There are substitutes for oil, but not for water. We can produce food without oil, but not without water.
Local Lawmaking: A Call for a Community Rights Movement
THOMAS LINZEY – Many have now concluded that our legislatures, environmental agencies and courts have all been privatized – and are now used by a corporate minority as just one more means to get oil and gas out of the ground, to run family farmers out of business, and to take everything of value that our communities have.
Advanced Battery Technology Opens New Vistas for Electric Vehicles
MARC CARTER, BRIT LIGGETT, TAZ LOOMANS – Four articles at Inhabitat.com tout recent advances in battery technology that open new horizons for electric vehicles. Inhabitat.com is a weblog devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future. The blog also addresses innovative design and practices in technology, energy, transportation, fashion and art.
Welch Leads Bipartisan Coalition in Congress to Block U.S. Intervention in Syria
OFFICE OF PETER WELCH – Washington, DC (June 27th) – Rep. Peter Welch joined with Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY), Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) at a press conference today to unveil bipartisan legislation to block U.S. military intervention in Syria without an affirmative vote of Congress.
Climate Change Poses Grave Security Threat
DAMIAN CARRINGTON – Climate change poses as grave a threat to the UK’s security and economic resilience as terrorism and cyber-attacks, according to a senior military commander who was appointed as William Hague’s climate envoy this year. In his first interview since taking up the post, Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti said climate change was “one of the greatest risks we face in the 21st century,” particularly because it presented a global threat.
Obama Launches ‘Coordinated Assault’ Against Warming
JEAN CHEMNICK – In a speech on Tuesday, June 25, at Georgetown University, President Obama said that rather than waiting for Congress to act on climate change, his administration would move forward in every way it could — curbing emissions, shoring up American infrastructure and heading “a coordinated assault” abroad on global warming.
Military Quietly Grants Itself the Power to Police the Streets Without Local or State Consent
JED MOREY – By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies†the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.
Dramatic Rise in the Number of Homicides Drives Reduction in World Peace
INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMICS AND PEACE – A dramatic rise in the number of homicides and more countries, 59, increasing their military expenditure as a percentage of GDP were the key drivers in making the world a less peaceful place, according to the 2013 Global Peace Index (GPI) released today.
Nuclear Boss Seeks Corporate Welfare While Demanding Cuts in Renewable Subsidies
ANDY ROWELL, RICHARD COOKSON – The boss of a company set to build two nuclear reactors in Somerset has been demanding cuts to renewable energy subsidies and to help for people in fuel poverty while quietly lobbying the European Commission for financial help for new nuclear power stations.
GE Will Not Chase Nuke Business if Laws Don’t Change
DINESH NARAYANAN – One big multinational is almost certain to be out of the race for nuclear energy business in India. On Wednesday I had met John Flannery, outgoing President and Chief Executive Officer of GE in India for a chat before he left for his new assignment: finding targets for the company to buy. Flannery said GE will rather give up business than play within India’s civil nuclear liability rules.
The Foodopoly: Too Big to Eat
DAVID SWANSON – We’ve come to understand that the banks are too big to fail, too big to take to trial, too big not to let them write our public policy, too big not to reward them for ruining our economy. Why have we come to understand that?
Newly Proposed Carbon Tax Will Fight Global Warming, Protect Low-Income Americans, Reduce Deficit
RICHARD CAPERTON – In the last two years, the biggest extreme weather events cost American families and businesses $188 billion. As we pump more and more greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere, these disasters are only going to become more common.
Bhutan Set to Plough Lone Furrow as World’s First Wholly Organic Country
John Vidal and Annie Kellly – Bhutan plans to become the first country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and farm waste for fertilizers.
Rep. Barbara Lee Introduces Bill to Create Department of Peacebuilding
REP. BARBARA LEE – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) on February 15 introduced a new bill in the House of Representatives that would create a Cabinet-level “Department of Peacebuilding.”
Congresswoman Barbara Lee Introduces Bill to Audit the Pentagon
CONGRESSWOMAN BARBARA LEE – Congresswoman Barbara Lee has introduced the “Audit the Pentagon Act of 2013†for increased transparency and accountability in the defense budget. This bipartisan bill will cut the budget of any Federal agency by five percent that does not receive an independent audit for the previous year. To protect benefits for the nation’s veterans, military personnel accounts and the Defense Health Program would be exempt from cuts.
Nader: Postal Crisis “Manufacturedâ€
INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY – Reuters reported this week that President Obama has endorsed a plan to “rescue†the Postal Service, including by reducing service one day a week.
Bloomberg reports: “A measure that may put the U.S. Postal Service under a control board, end to-the-door mail delivery and close post offices using the same process as military-base shutdowns was approved by a U.S. House panel. The bill, sponsored by Representatives Darrell Issa, a California Republican, and Dennis Ross, a Florida Republican, was approved today with Republican support and Democratic opposition.
Gene Sharp: The Machiavelli of Nonviolence
JOHN-PAUL FLINTOFF – In a long life of scholarship and dissent, Gene Sharp has been imprisoned and persecuted, but never silenced. His ideas continue to inspire resistance movements across the world. Gene Sharp is not a typical pacifist. “When I used to lecture, I would always get complaints from the pacifists,†says the academic, who turns 85 this month. “They would say I wasn’t pure…”
BAN: Recycling Cell Phones, Laptops, TVs Correctly
CHRIS THOMAS – A new national certification program ensures that recyclers properly dispose of items such as laptops, televisions and cell phones. According to the Basel Action Network (BAN), a toxic-waste watchdog group, the oversight is necessary for what’s become an international environmental nightmare.
Out with the Old: Recycling Cell Phones, Laptops, TVs…
CHRIS THOMAS – PORTLAND, Ore. – “Out with the old, in with the new†takes on a whole new meaning when the topic is electronic gear. A new national certification program ensures that recyclers properly dispose of items such as laptops, televisions and cell phones. According to the Basel Action Network (BAN), a toxic-waste watchdog group, the oversight is necessary for what’s become an international environmental nightmare.
GravityLight: the Low-Cost Lamp Powered by Sand and Gravity
OLIVER WAINWRIGHT – The problem of bringing light to remote parts of the developing world has been tackled in the past with everything from solar-powered lamps to wind-up devices and rechargeable batteries – all of which require relatively expensive kit or physical effort by the user. But two London-based designers have now developed a light source that operates on the stuff that surrounds you – earth, rocks or sand – with the helping hand of gravity.
Nuclear Test in Nevada Condemned by Iran, Japan
JOSEY WALES – Iran has strongly condemned the U.S. for carrying out a nuclear test in Nevada this week, saying the move threatens world peace and shows a hypocritical set of double standards set by Washington when it comes to nuclear research. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said the Wednesday detonation proves that US foreign policy relies heavily on the use of nuclear weapons, disregarding UN calls for global disarmament, PressTV reports.
LA, Moapa Indians to Cooperate on Giant Solar Project
KEITH ROGERS – The sun is shining more brightly on the Moapa River Indian Reservation today. Council members for the city of Los Angeles approved a $1.6 billion, 25-year pact Tuesday to purchase solar power from a company that will build nearly 1 million photovoltaic panels on tribal land.
Occupying Democracy: Amendments to Get Money out of Politics
RUSSELL SIMMONS – We have recently seen the massive expense of the political system on all levels, and we have joined forces to fight for our democracy. We refuse to let our future be auctioned off and sold to the highest bidder. When the focus of our candidates has to be on raising money, it takes time away from working with the people on the actual critical issues.
Britain Rejects U.S. Request to Use UK Bases in Nuclear Standoff with Iran
NICK HOPKINS – Britain has rebuffed U.S. pleas to use military bases in the UK to support the build-up of forces in the Gulf, citing secret legal advice which states that any preemptive strike on Iran could be in breach of international law. The Guardian has been told that U.S. diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from U.S. bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories.
Business Warned to Prepare for Catastrophic Climate Impacts
JO CONFINO – PricewaterhouseCoopers’ latest index points to a catastrophic future unless radical action is taken now to combat climate change. “Business leaders have been asking for clarity in political ambition on climate change,” says partner Leo Johnson. “Now one thing is clear: businesses, governments and communities across the world need to plan for a warming world – not just 2C, but 4C or even 6C.”
Food Official: Land Grabs in Africa Like the “Wild Westâ€
MARK TRAN – Amid warnings that land deals are undermining food security, the head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has compared “land grabs” in Africa to the “wild west”, saying a “sheriff” is needed to restore the rule of law. José Graziano da Silva, the FAO’s director general, conceded it was not possible to stop large investors buying land, but said deals in poor countries needed to be brought under control.
Drones to Attack Afghanistan from Britain
MARIO LEDWITH – The hi-tech Reaper drones are primarily used to gather intelligence on enemy activity on the ground, but they also carry 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles for precision strikes on insurgents. But the state-of-the-art American-built aircraft have sparked controversy, with human rights campaigners claiming they kill and injure large numbers of civilians and breach international law.
Special Report: Food, Beverage Industry Pays for Seat at Health-Policy Table
DUFF WILSON and ADAM KERLIN – As the world’s foremost health agency, the World Health Organization bills itself as an impartial advocate working on behalf of 194 member nations. Its mission as the public health arm of the United Nations ranges from stanching communicable diseases such as malaria and AIDS to battling what the U.N. considers the latest “global epidemic”: chronic ailments such as diabetes and heart disease caused primarily by unhealthy diets.
Millions of Unexploded Bombs Lie in Waters off U.S. Coast, Researchers Say
ALLISON BARRIE – Lurking (and leaking) beneath the world’s oceans are an estimated 200 million pounds of unexploded and potentially dangerous explosives — from bombs to missiles to mustard gas. Texas A&M oceanographers William Bryant and Niall Slowey documented two such dumpsites in the Gulf of Mexico recently. They conservatively guess that at least 31 million pounds of bombs can be found not just in the Gulf, but also off the coasts of at least 16 states, from New Jersey to Hawaii.