Environment

Oh Frack, President Obama

By David Swanson, American Herald Tribune

A new film called Dear President Obama that is narrated by Mark Ruffalo begins very gently, sympathizing with President Obama’s supposed need to please his funders and corporate lobbyists. But the story it then begins to present of what the frack president has done to the United States with fracking is absolutely devastating — as severe and tragic in its way as what the drone president read more

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Guess Where Huge Funds for Fighting Climate Change Are Being Wasted

In the United States it’s not actually difficult to find significant funding with which to research new and innovative — not to say bizarre and absurd — pursuits, as long as they form part of an overall project of mass murder.

The United States has hundreds of programs at universities, think tanks, and research institutes that claim to devote their attention to “security” and “defense” studies. Yet in almost all of these programs that receive many millions of dollars in read more

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I'm Dreaming of a Christmas Below 70

The sun is shining, the grass is green

It feels like a summer day

It’s not supposed to be this way

In Charlottesville VA

‘Cause it’s December the 24th

At latitude 38 North…

I’m dreaming of a Christmas below 70

Just like the ones I used to know

Where the treetops glisten and children listen

To wisdom instead of Morning Joe

I’m dreaming of a year with seasons

Instead of growing heat and blight

If climate deniers see the light

And our society is set right

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Climate Blindness Could Afflict Millions

The poor frog has of course been slandered. A frog will die in boiling water, but jump out of a slowly warming pot.

The homo not-so-sapiens is another story. You can sit a human down in front of a graveyard, and he’ll tell you about eternal life. You can sit a human down in front of a blunder in her own handwriting, and she’ll tell you and believe that someone else did it. And you can put a Marylander in a rising Chesapeake Bay, show him islands sinking beneath the water, and he’ll read more

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Does the Pope Know a Boy Is About to Be Crucified?

The Pope will speak to Congress on Thursday. No other institution on earth does more to destroy the habitability of the planet for future generations. Will the Pope raise his concerns with them or only when he’s thousands of miles away?

No other institution sells and gives as many weapons to the world, participates in as many wars, or invests remotely as much in planning, provoking, and pursuing war after war. Will the Pope speak up for abolishing war in the U.S. Capitol or only when he’s read more

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Film Review: This Changes Everything

I thought the cause of climate destruction was political corruption, but I thought the cause of so little popular resistance was ignorance and denial. Naomi Klein’s new film This Changes Everything seems to assume that everyone is aware of the problem. The enemy that the film takes on is the belief that “human nature” is simply greedy and destructive and destined to behave in the way that Western culture behaves toward the natural world.

I think that is an increasingly common read more

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Could a Plant Win a Presidential Debate?

I don’t mean an infiltrator planted in a nefarious plot to throw an election. I mean a green, soil-rooted, leafy plant.

I’ve been reading Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola. It is at the very least a suggestive treatise.

Imagine that astronauts discover life on another planet, and that the life discovered there is very different from humans. It doesn’t use our sort of language or engage in our sort of read more

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