Environment

Apocalypse has been given a bad name.  The Seventh Day Adventists are still around.  The Nike sneaker cult failed to open Heaven’s Gate.  The new millennium brought us George W. Bush, not Jesus H. Christ.  And everybody’s terrified of “drinking the Kool-Aid.”

But our species is living beyond its means.  If we continue down this path, the planet, our food supplies, our climate, and life as we know it will collapse.  If we bring population growth, read more

Uncontent with the existing methods by which industrialized societies poison themselves, local governments across the United States have apparently come up with a new one: adding chloramine to our water.  The case against doing so, seems to be pretty well documented.

Here’s an article from Cville Weekly.

Lorrie Delahanty provides some information and what can be done about it:

In March of 2014, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority plans to switch chlorine to CHLORAMINE as a disinfectant read more

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Wilkins heard the arguments on Friday in Washington, D.C., and is deliberating now on the question of whether young people can sue to compel their government to take serious measures to stop global warming. 

Judge Robert Wilkins is familiar with discrimination, having been the plaintiff in a well-known driving-while-black case of racial profiling in Maryland.  But few of us are familiar with the concept of discrimination against future generations.  read more

Here in the land of the free lunch and the home of the instant gratification, most people make a huge deal out of children’s rights or fetuses’ rights, or occasionally both.  Which is extremely bizarre — crazier perhaps than bombing houses in Afghanistan to protect the rights of the women inside them.  Because we’re engaged in the deliberate and knowing process of slowly and irreversibly rendering the whole damn planet uninhabitable.  If not our children, read more

A new book suggests that “It’s the economy, stupid,” may be more than political strategy; it may also be the key to environmental sustainability. The book is “Green Washed: Why We Can’t Buy Our Way to a Green Planet,” by Kendra Pierre-Louis. The argument developed is not just that the consumer choices of an individual won’t save the planet without collective action, but also that the only collective action that will save us is abandoning the whole idea read more

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Before trees got cleared out
While oil fumes belched out
And acid rain replaced the snow

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be filled up with spite
And the war on Christmas give you fright

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
And if this trend keeps up I might
Occupy a camp out
Until we stamp out
Every stinking coal plant within sight

The International Forum on Globalization has published the most concise, useful, readable, and damning denunciation of nuclear technology I’ve seen.  And it’s available for free as a PDF right here:

Nuclear Roulette: The Case Against a “Nuclear Renaissance”

Nuclear energy suffers from the following drawbacks:

The energy put into mining, processing, and shipping uranium, plant construction, operation, and decommissioning is roughly equal to the energy a nuclear plant read more

Last year I reviewed a book called “Apocalypse Never” that made a powerful case for our options being limited to two: either we get rid of nuclear weapons or humanity will be destroyed. I noted then a deep flaw in the case: the author accepted nuclear energy as something we could survive, focusing his opposition purely on nuclear weaponry.

A new film makes the additional case I was looking for. “Knocking on the Devil’s Door: Our Deadly Nuclear Legacy” by Gary Null read more

Come on Irene!

Poor old Michele B
Sounds deranged on the radio, breaks a million rules of logic, so …
Fox Newsers cry and sing along and blame storms on …
God yeah God, oh God! now I must say more than ever
Go Toora Loora Toora Loo-Rye-Aye
and they can sing just like they’re loon ah tics

Come on Irene
I know what you mean. At this moment you mean anything,
But now I digress, my thoughts I confess verge on kooky
Ah come on Irene.

Dum duh Dum ..

While the evidence suggests that President Obama is not terribly bright and has just benefited from succeeding a downright moron, and while voluminous evidence to which I am privileged suggests that my 9-year-old niece Hallie is extremely intelligent, consider just this one way in which Hallie would make a wiser president than Barack.

Infants live in the moment, and toddlers can’t plan much beyond the next day or so, but as we grow we become able to consider longer periods of time.  read more

TRANSCRIPT:

DAVID SWANSON: Okay, we’re recording, this is David Swanson, I’m speaking with Harvey Wasserman, long time wonderful activist, author, author among other of wonderful books of “Solartopia,” and Harvey, you were emailing me yesterday a little bit about success stories. Do you want to elaborate?

HARVEY WASSERMAN: Well, when we first started the anti-nuclear movement back in 1973, and we weren’t the only ones, read more

A year ago BP began filling the Gulf of Mexico with oil.

Last week BP blocked a woman from entering its annual meeting.

Which will prove the bigger mistake?

BP may have chosen the right country to hit with the worst oil disaster in world history. If there’s any population that will take seeing its land and water destroyed for corporate profit lying down, it’s got to be us. We’re split between gratitude and indifference: should we thank BP or just stay out of its way?

BP may have read more

By David Swanson

Earlier this year, we put millions of barrels of oil, billions of cubic feet of gas, and 1.5 million gallons of chemical dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico. Of those dispersants, designed for use on the surface, 800,000 gallons were sprayed directly into the oil gusher on the dark ocean floor, potentially multiplying the damage while keeping it out of sight. Already people are dying.

Frontline on PBS is now airing The Spill, read more

By David Swanson

It’s over a decade since I last heard Ralph Nader speak in Charlottesville, Va., and I was curious to see what kind of crowd would greet him Monday evening. The answer was one of the biggest rooms on campus packed, and mostly with students, enthusiastic students who gave standing ovations, and laughed and responded throughout a 90-minute speech.

There are not many — if any — other speakers who can get young people in the United States to turn out for a political read more

By David Swanson

Way back in January, the ocean was still ocean, oil still oil, and combining the two had not yet occurred to us.  The Conch Republic, the Florida Keys, was — in retrospect — a secure and pristine paradise.

The danger was of sunburn, not of crude oil on your skin or toxic chemicals in the air you breathed.

While I was there with my family, we enjoyed the sand, sun, and sea.  But we wanted to see more pelicans.  We wanted to see lots of pelicans.

So we read more

For $5 Friday I just gave $5 to http://savethewildup.org

As my friend (and book editor) Crystal Yakacki explains (like many websites, this worthy group’s website does not explain itself to newcomers and just gives the latest developments):

“The UP is the upper peninsula of Michigan, one of the most beautiful places in the world. The native people there, and local neighborhoods, have been trying to protect a sacred site from a mine by Kennecott Eagle that will not only destroy the sacred read more