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Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?

by BeatrizMackenzi Posted on September 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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According to the latest New York Times poll, Gary Johnson is supported by 26 percent of young voters.1 Of these Johnson supporters, how many are liberal former supporters of Bernie Sanders who would normally be expected to switch to Hillary Clinton? No one seems to have explicitly polled about this, but various pieces of evidence suggest that it’s around half. If you make some reasonable assumptions and do a bit of arithmetic, this suggests that somewhere around a fifth of young liberal voters are casting their lot with Johnson.

In one sense, this is easy to understand. Johnson favors legalization of marijuana. He’s good on civil liberties and wants to cut way back on overseas military interventions. He’s moderate on immigration. He’s pro-choice and supports gay rights. There are plenty of things for Bernie supporters to like about him.

On the other hand, Johnson is a libertarian. Here’s a smattering of what else he believes:

He supports TPP.
He supports fracking.
He opposes any federal policies that would make college more affordable or reduce student debt. In fact, he wants to abolish student loans entirely.
He thinks Citizens United is great.
He doesn’t want to raise the minimum wage. At all.
He favors a balanced-budget amendment and has previously suggested that he would slash federal spending 43 percent in order to balance the budget. This would require massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and social welfare programs of all kinds.
He opposes net neutrality.
He wants to increase the Social Security retirement age to 75 and he’s open to privatization.
He opposes any kind of national health care and wants to repeal Obamacare.
He opposes practically all forms of gun control.
He opposes any kind of paid maternity or medical leave.
He supported the Keystone XL pipeline.
He opposes any government action to address climate change.
He wants to cut the corporate tax rate to zero.
He appears to believe that we should reduce financial regulation. All we need to do is allow big banks to fail and everything will be OK.
He wants to remove the Fed’s mandate to maximize employment and has spoken favorably of returning to the gold standard.
He wants to block-grant Medicare and turn it over to the states.
He wants to repeal the 16th Amendment and eliminate the income tax, the payroll tax, and the estate tax. He would replace it with a 28 percent FairTax that exempts the poor. This is equivalent to a 39 percent sales tax, and it would almost certainly represent a large tax cut for the rich.

Some of her weirder beliefs aside, it’s easy to see why former Bernie supporters might turn to Jill Stein. But Gary Johnson? He makes Hillary Clinton look like the second coming of FDR. Unless you’re basically a single-issue voter on civil liberties and military force, it’s hard to see why any lefty of any stripe would even think of supporting Johnson. What’s the deal here?

1Oddly enough, the story that originally reported this has been silently purged of this statistic, but let’s go with it anyway.

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Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?

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Gold King Mine still leaking one year after spill

by TamaraN45j Posted on August 5, 2016

Yellow mine waste water from the Gold King Mine is seen in San Juan County, Colorado. August 7, 2015. REUTERS/EPA

gold rush

Gold King Mine still leaking one year after spill

By on Aug 5, 2016Share

One year ago, Environmental Protection Agency contractors inadvertently leached wastewater from an abandoned gold mine into the Colorado’s Animas River — turning it a lovely shade of brown.

It caused a shutdown of the popular recreational river for eight days and flowed as far as Lake Powell, which supplies much of the region’s water for drinking. Two thousand Navajo farmers and ranchers were unable to water or irrigate their crops after the accident, and officials with Navajo Nation declared an emergency in the wake of the accident.

Today, metal-laden water is still contaminating the river at 500 gallons a minute, Colorado Public Radio reports. The only improvement is that the polluted water is now getting filtered at a temporary treatment plant.

The Gold King Mine spill exposed an problem endemic to western U.S. There are 161,000 similar abandoned mines across 12 states, with an estimated 20 percent, or 33,000, polluting groundwater and environment.

The federal government has undertaken some actions in response to the spill, but the larger troubles remain. Republicans used the occasion to highlight the incompetence of federal bureaucrats; the Justice Department began a criminal inquiry into the spill; and the EPA delegated $3.7 million (and counting) in emergency response and water quality monitoring.

Little of this addresses the mines that are still there, are still dirty, and still threaten western water supplies — water that is becoming increasingly valuable as climate change and extended droughts dry up the West.

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Gold King Mine still leaking one year after spill

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Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City Is Closing

by StaciAndersen Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, once the crown jewel of Donald Trump’s sprawling casino empire, will officially close because of an ongoing strike and hemorrhaging losses, the Press of Atlantic City reported on Wednesday. The casino, which was originally owned by Trump but went bankrupt, only to be bailed out by billionaire-investor Carl Icahn, will close at the end of the summer.

Tony Rodio, president of Tropicana Entertainment, explained in a statement:

Currently the Taj is losing multi-millions a month, and now with this strike, we see no path to profitability. Our directors cannot just allow the Taj to continue burning through tens of millions of dollars when the union has single-handedly blocked any path to profitability. Unfortunately we’ve reached the point where we will have to close the Taj.

Trump, who filed for bankruptcy four times in the past three decades (one of those times with the Taj Mahal), has used his alleged business acumen as a qualification for the presidency. But as numerous reports have shown, the Republican nominee appears to have exaggerated his successes in real estate and the casino business.

In July, when Hillary Clinton took aim at her rival’s shoddy business record to make the case that a Trump presidency would destroy the American economy, she stood in front of the Taj Mahal.

The casino’s closure comes as yet another blow during one of the most chaotic weeks of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It began when Khizr Khan and his wife appeared at the Democratic National Convention to denounce Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering the country. Trump responded by attacking the Khan family. Despite sharp condemnation from top Republican leaders for his remarks, the real estate magnate has remained defiant, refusing to apologize for smearing the Gold Star parents.

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Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City Is Closing

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Here Are 7 Terrifying Charts That Show Exactly What We’re Doing to the Planet

by Myrna Posted on August 2, 2016

Scientists have some bad news for Earth. Bernhard Staehli/Shutterstock This story was originally published by the Guardian. The world is careening towards an environment never experienced before by humans, with the temperature of the air and oceans breaking records, sea levels reaching historic highs and carbon dioxide surpassing a key milestone, a major international report has found. The “state of the climate” report, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with input from hundreds of scientists from 62 countries, confirmed there was a “toppling of several symbolic mileposts” in heat, sea level rise and extreme weather in 2015. “The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” Michael Mann, a leading climatologist at Penn State, told the Guardian. “They are playing out before us, in real time. The 2015 numbers drive that home.” Last year was the warmest on record, with the annual surface temperature beating the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit). This means that the world is now 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, largely due to a huge escalation in the production of greenhouse gases. The United Nations has already said that 2016 is highly likely to break the annual record again, after 14 straight months of extreme heat aided by a hefty El Niño climatic event, a weather event that typically raises temperatures around the world. The oceans, which absorb more than 90 percent of the extra CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, also reached a new record temperature, with sharp spikes in the El Niño-dominated eastern Pacific, which was 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) warmer than the long-term average, and the Arctic, where the temperature in August hit a dizzying 8 degrees C (14.4 degrees F) above average. The thermal expansion of the oceans, compounded by melting glaciers, resulted in the highest global sea level on record in 2015. The oceans are around 70 millimeters higher than the 1993 average, which is when comprehensive satellite measurements of sea levels began. The seas are rising at an average rate of 3.3 millimeters a year, with the western Pacific and Indian Oceans experiencing the fastest increases. These changes are being driven by a CO2 concentration that surpassed the symbolic 400 parts per million mark at the Mauna Loa research station in Hawaii last year. The NOAA report states that the global CO2 level was a touch under this, at 399.4 ppm, an increase of 2.2 ppm compared to 2014. NOAA said other “remarkable” changes in 2015 include the Arctic’s lowest maximum sea ice extent in the 37-year satellite record, recorded in February 2015. The world’s alpine glaciers recorded a net annual loss of ice for the 36th consecutive year and the Greenland ice sheet, which would balloon sea levels by around 7 meters should it disintegrate, experienced melting over more than 50 percent of its surface. The rapid changes in the climate may have profound consequences for humans and other species. In June last year, a severe heat wave claimed over 1,000 lives in Karachi, Pakistan. Severe drought caused food shortages for millions of people in Ethiopia, with a lack of rainfall resulting in “intense and widespread” forest fires in Indonesia that belched out a vast quantity of greenhouse gas. Diminishing sea ice is causing major walrus herds to haul themselves out on to land. Arctic marine species, such as snailfish and polar cod, are being pushed out of the region by species coming from further south, attracted to the warming waters. A huge algal bloom off the west coast of North America harmed marine life and fisheries. Scientists have said there were underlying climate change trends at play but last year was also influenced by the strong El Niño event, which is when equatorial Pacific waters warm, leading to an array of weather effects around the world. El Niño has also helped spur searing heat in 2016 but has now petered out. Thomas Karl, director of NOAA national centers for environmental information, said that last year’s climate “was shaped both by long-term change and an El Niño event. When we think about being climate resilient, both of these time scales are important to consider. “Last year’s El Niño was a clear reminder of how short-term events can amplify the relative influence and impacts stemming from longer-term warming trends.” Kate Willett, a senior scientist at Britain’s Met Office, said that there was a 75 percent annual increase in the amount of land that experienced severe drought last year. “Looking at a range of climate measurements, 2015 was yet another highly significant year,” she said. “Not only was 2015 the warmest year on record by a large margin, it was also another year when the levels of dominant greenhouse gases reached new peaks.” The state of the climate report is now in its 26th year. The peer-reviewed series is published annually by the American Meteorological Society. Read more:  Here Are 7 Terrifying Charts That Show Exactly What We’re Doing to the Planet ; ; ;

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Here Are 7 Terrifying Charts That Show Exactly What We’re Doing to the Planet

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Why Recycled Jewelry Matters for a Green Valentine’s Day

by MarlaTranter Posted on February 8, 2016

As beautiful as jewelry can be to wear, it sure can have an ugly impact on people and the planet:

* Irresponsible mining practices, often in developing countries, have caused terrible human suffering and environmental devastation. I personally witnessed gold being panned along the banks of the Amazon in Peru; the workers were just dumping the arsenic-tainted slurry they used to separate the gold from the rock directly back into the river.

* Diamond mining has fueled civil wars in many African countries, where governments use “horrific violence” to maintain control of people and resources in mining regions, reports Brilliant Earth, a company devoted to producing jewelry ethically. A fictional portrayal of this issue was poignantly told in the Academy Award-nominated movie Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo di Caprio.

* Mining can take a heartbreakinghuman toll. Children as well as adults may be forced into dangerous jobs mining gold and diamonds. More than 200,000 women have been raped in Congo since a civil war began there over access to the country’s mineral resources. Workers die when tunnels collapse, rocks fall and underground mines catch fire.

* In addition to arsenic, mercury is used to separate gold from other materials. Brilliant Earth reports that gold mining is responsible for 30 to 40 percent of man-made mercury pollution each year. Mercury is a powerful toxin that’s known to cause brain damage, impair the ability of the heart and lungs to function and wreak neurological havoc in developing fetuses. When it gets dumped into a river or stream, it ends up in drinking and bathing water and becomes unavoidable.

* Gold mining is not just a problem in far-away countries. The U.S. is the third-largest gold-producing nationin the world, after China and Australia. Most U.S. gold comes from large open-pit heap leach mines in Nevada. “This type of mining is particularly damaging to the environment,” reports MIT. “Environmental hazards are present during every step of the open-pit mining process,” including exposing radioactive rocks, asbestos-like minerals and metallic dust. Rock slurries, which are mixtures of pulverized rock and liquid, are produced as tailings. Toxic and radioactive elements from these liquids can leak into bedrock and get into groundwater. If their containment ponds break, the slurries can be sent coursing into streams and rivers.

* Jewelry made from the body parts of endangered species threatens those animals even more. The Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) prohibits trading in shells, bones, skeletons and other parts of animals that are threatened or endangered. That means that shouldn’t buy jewelry made from those animals, either.

The Benefits of Buying Recycled Jewelry

Buying recycled jewelry offers a sharp contrast to buying it brand new. Choosing recycled saves energy, water and the mineral resources themselves. Eighty percent of all gold mined is made into jewelry, reports TheWorldWomenWant.com. There is already so much gold availablein old jewelry, coins and furnishingsthat we could satisfy our gold demands for the next 50 years just by getting access to old gold.

Making jewelry from recycled materials also helps reduce environmental degradation. It’s easy to see how much better it is to create a new ring out of an old one instead of needing to mine and process the gold from scratch.

Plus, there’s something inspiring about creating new and beautiful jewelry out of what otherwise might be thrown away.

And remember, your jewelry doesn’t need to be made from gold, sapphires, diamonds or rubies to be exquisite. I have a beautiful necklace made from an antique button, a gorgeous pendant fashioned from a piece of Chinese pottery and lovely earrings that used to be beach glass.

Where Can You Buy Recycled Jewelry?

Here is a list of the many places to find jewelry made from recycled gemstones, metals and everyday items.

Antique stores and estate sales – For high-quality rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants and broaches, browse antique stores and estate sales. Here’s another advantage: Prices may be somewhat better than buying the equivalent item new.

Craft fairs – Look for artisans who work with locally available materials, including beads, glass, stones, stainless steel and wood. Locate craft fairs by date and state here.

Family heirlooms – Jewelry is lovely to pass down from one generation to the next. My wedding ring, a combination of diamonds set into a gold band, originally belonged to my favorite aunt.My father gave his gold watch to one of my brothers. Perhaps your mother has a uniquenecklace she’ll pass on to you. Jewelry like this may not necessarily be more valuable, but it probably holds more sentimental meaning.

Etsy – Etsy artistsoften make jewelry out of recycled materials, including unusual items like buttons, typewriter keys, silverware, pop tops from soda and beer cans, sea glass and pottery. Plus on Etsy, you’re likely to find one-of-a-kind designs, since the artists don’t usually mass produce their wares.

Brilliant Earth – This company makes gorgeous wedding and engagement rings from recycled gemstones, recycled gold anddiamonds mined from countries committed to ethical mining practices, including Canada, Namibia and Botswana. Leber Jeweler and Hume Atelier are two other jewelers that have made a commitment to ethical sourcing.

Do What Oscar Nominees Do: Borrow It! The next time you watch the Academy Awards, listen closely when the starlets are asked about their stunning jewelry. They almost always say they’re wearing it on loan from a famous jewelry designer.And that’s a smart idea. Why not borrow a stand-out necklace or pair of earrings for your next big event rather than purchase it new. Check with family and friends to see what they’d be willing to loan you. Or visit BorrowedBling.com, an online emporium that, for a fee, lets you borrow rings, bracelets, necklaces, broaches, pins and earrings. You pay a monthly fee, browse their selections, place your order and return the items using their padded envelope and postage-paid shipping label.

Do you have a favorite piece of recycled jewelry? Please share!

Related:
Fashion Gone Bad: Rhino Horn Jewelry
Toxic Jewelry: Cadmium Found in Ardene, Aldo Products

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Why Recycled Jewelry Matters for a Green Valentine’s Day

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Los Lobos Comes Back With Scorching Boogie and Psychedelia

by MoniqueSupple91 Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Los Lobos
Gates of Gold
429 Records

Is there a more versatile outfit in rock? Since the ’70s, the LA quintet Los Lobos has displayed a staggering stylistic range beyond the reach of most other great bands, and done everything with soulful verve. On its first album of new material in five years, the group shows its age in the best possible way, segueing effortlessly from scorching boogie to wistful psychedelia to tender Mexican folk, never straining for effect. As always, David Hidalgo tends to sing the romantic songs, while César Rosas tackles the rowdier ones, but either way, Los Lobos runs like the musical equivalent of an impeccably maintained classic car. Long may they roll.

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Los Lobos Comes Back With Scorching Boogie and Psychedelia

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This Map Shows What San Francisco Will Look Like After Sea Levels Rise

by Myrna Posted on July 30, 2015

And not much is being done about it. Mark Schwettmann/Shutterstock Developers in the booming San Francisco Bay Area are busy planning everything from much-needed new housing to sports stadiums and gleaming tech campuses. But according to a new report just published by the San Francisco Public Press, many of these construction projects sit on land susceptible to rising waters due to climate change. And regulators and local governments are not doing much to prepare. The Public Press found 27 major commercial and residential developments that will be vulnerable to flooding if San Francisco Bay sea levels rise as much as climate researchers like the National Research Council project in the next century. These developments include a new stadium for the Golden State Warriors, campuses being built by Google and Facebook, and revamped public spaces like San Francisco’s iconic ferry terminal and Jack London Square in Oakland. Read the rest at Mother Jones. This article is from:  This Map Shows What San Francisco Will Look Like After Sea Levels Rise ; ; ;

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This Map Shows What San Francisco Will Look Like After Sea Levels Rise

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Texas Wants Its Own Fort Knox

by GeoffrePutilin Posted on May 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Texas independence—or paranoia—strikes again. In recent years, some Lone Star officials, including former Gov. Rick Perry, have flirted with secession. Last month the new Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, asked the state national guard to monitor a US military exercise that some residents fear is cover for a federal takeover of the state that will use Walmarts as staging areas. And now the state is on the verge of seizing the gold owned by the state that is stored in New York City and building a massive bunker to hoard this booty.

Per the Houston Chronicle:

AUSTIN — Texas could get its own version of Fort Knox, the impenetrable depository for gold bullion, if the Legislature gets its way.

Under House Bill 483, approved unanimously on Tuesday by the state Senate, Comptroller Glenn Hegar would be authorized to establish and administer the state’s first bullion depository at a site not yet determined.

No other state has its own state bullion depository, officials said.

The state government has about $1 billion in gold bullion stored outside the state, mostly in the basement of the Federal Reserve building in Manhattan. The gold has been there for years—because it’s so annoying to move, it’s easier to keep everyone’s gold in the same place, and the financial center of the world is the most obvious place. When bullion changes hands, it’s mostly on paper. So why does Texas now need to grab all its gold? Is it just because Texans don’t trust New Yorkers? Is it really that simple?

Yes:

“New York will hate this,” state sen. Lois Kolkhorst said of the bill that now goes to Gov. Greg Abbott to be signed into law. “To me, that and the fact that it will save Texas money makes it a golden idea.”

The cost-cutting bit refers to the storage fees Texas has to pay to keep its gold offsite, although Texas would still have to shell out money for upkeep and security if it went the DIY route. Incidentally, Perry supported the Texas Bullion Depository when it was first proposed in 2013, telling Glenn Beck, “If we own it, I will suggest to you that that’s not someone else’s determination whether we can take possession of it back or not.”

But building a giant vault to house all the state’s gold will be the easy part. The tough task? Safely and securely moving 57,000 pounds of gold from Gotham to Texas. Perhaps we now know the plot for the eighth Fast and Furious movie.

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Texas Wants Its Own Fort Knox

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Does Anyone Really Know What a Healthy Diet Is Anymore?

by ColemanKrauss Posted on February 24, 2015

Mother Jones

For several years now I’ve been following the controversy over whether the dietary guidelines that have developed over the the past 70 years might be all wrong. And I’ve become tentatively convinced that, in fact, they are wrong. For most people—not all!—salt isn’t a big killer; cholesterol isn’t harmful; and red meat and saturated fat are perfectly OK. Healthy, even. Sugar, on the other hand, really needs to be watched.

Before I go on, a great big caveat: I’m not even an educated amateur on this subject. I’ve read a fair amount about it, but I’ve never dived into it systematically. And the plain truth is that firm proof is hard to come by when it comes to diet. It’s really, really hard to conduct the kinds of experiments that would give us concrete proof that one diet is better than another, and the studies that have been done almost all have defects of some kind.

In other words, what follows are some thoughts I’ve gathered over the years, not a crusade to convince you I’m right. And it’s strictly about what’s healthy to eat, not what’s good for the planet. Take it for what it’s worth.

Salt is perhaps the most personal subject to me. My father had a stroke when I was a teenager, and his doctor told him he needed to watch his salt intake. Ever since then, I’ve watched mine too. As it happens, this wasn’t a big sacrifice: I don’t eat a lot of prepared foods, which are usually loaded with salt, and I’ve never felt the need to heavily salt my food.

Nevertheless, last year my doctor told me she was worried about my sodium level. I misunderstood at first, and figured that I needed to make additional efforts to cut back. But no. My serum sodium level was too low. What’s more, it turns out that most Americans consume a safe amount of sodium. The usual recommendation is to keep sodium intake below 2400 mg per day, but the bulk of the evidence suggests that twice this much is perfectly safe for people who don’t suffer from hypertension. (And even the recommendations for people with hypertension might be more restrictive than they need to be.)

Then there’s cholesterol. I guess I don’t have to say much about that: the evidence is now so overwhelming that even the U.S. government’s top nutrition panel announced a couple of weeks ago that dietary cholesterol was no longer a “nutrient of concern” in its latest guidelines. Go ahead and have an egg or three.

Finally, there’s saturated fat. The same nutrition panel that decided cholesterol is OK didn’t ease up its recommendations on saturated fat. But I’m increasingly skeptical of this too. Interestingly, Aaron Carroll is skeptical too:

As the guidelines have recommended cutting down on meat, especially red meat, this meant that many people began to increase their consumption of carbohydrates.

Decades later, it’s not hard to find evidence that this might have been a bad move. Many now believe that excessive carbohydrate consumption may be contributing to the obesity and diabetes epidemics. A Cochrane Review of all randomized controlled trials of reduced or modified dietary fat interventions found that replacing fat with carbohydrates does not protect even against cardiovascular problems, let alone death.

Interestingly, the new dietary recommendations may acknowledge this as well, dropping the recommendation to limit overall fat consumption in favor of a more refined recommendation to limit only saturated fat. Even that recommendation is hotly contested by some, though.

….It is frustrating enough when we over-read the results of epidemiologic studies and make the mistake of believing that correlation is the same as causation. It’s maddening, however, when we ignore the results of randomized controlled trials, which can prove causation, to continue down the wrong path. In reviewing the literature, it’s hard to come away with a sense that anyone knows for sure what diet should be recommended to all Americans.

Randomized trials are the gold standard of dietary studies, but as I said above, they’re really, really hard to conduct properly. You have to find a stable population of people. You have to pick half of them randomly and get them to change their diets. You have to trust them to actually do it. You have to follow them for years, not months. Virtually no trial can ever truly meet this standard.

Nonetheless, as Carroll says, the randomized trials we do have suggest that red meat and saturated fat have little effect on cardiovascular health—and might actually have a positive effect on cancer outcomes.

At the same time, increased consumption of sugars and carbohydrates might be actively bad for us. At the very least they contribute to obesity and diabetes, and there’s some evidence that they aren’t so great for your heart either.

So where does this leave us? As Carroll says, the literature as a whole suggests that we simply don’t know. We’ve been convinced of a lot of things for a long time, and it’s turned out that a lot of what we believed was never really backed by solid evidence in the first place. So now the dietary ship is turning. Slowly, but it’s turning.

For myself, I guess I continue to believe that the key is moderation. Try to eat more fresh food and fewer packaged meals. That said, there’s nothing wrong with salt or saturated fat or cholesterol or sugar. None of them need to be cut down to minuscule levels. You don’t need to limit yourself to two grams of salt or eliminate red meat from your diet. You can eat eggs and butter and steak if you want to. You should watch your sugar and carb intake, but only because so many of us consume truly huge quantities of both. In the end, all of these things are OK. They simply need to be consumed in moderation.1

Can I prove that? Nope. But it’s what I believe these days.

1Needless to say, none of this applies to people with specific conditions that require dietary restrictions. Listen to your doctor!

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Does Anyone Really Know What a Healthy Diet Is Anymore?

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Stanford Professors Urge Withdrawal From Fossil Fuel Investments

by Myrna Posted on January 20, 2015

Faculty members call on university to recognize urgency of climate change and divest from all oil, coal and gas companies. hanxu1011/Thinkstock Three hundred professors at Stanford, including Nobel laureates and this year’s Fields medal winner, are calling on the university to rid itself of all fossil fuel investments, in a sign that the campus divestment movement is gathering force. In a letter to Stanford’s president, John Hennessy, and the board of trustees, made available exclusively to the Guardian, the faculty members call on the university to recognize the urgency of climate change and divest from all oil, coal and gas companies. Stanford, which controls a $21.4 billion (£14.2 billion) endowment, eliminated direct investments in coalmining companies last May, making it the most prominent university to cut its ties to the industries that cause climate change. Months later, however, the university invested in three oil and gas companies. Read the rest at the Guardian. See the article here: Stanford Professors Urge Withdrawal From Fossil Fuel Investments ; ; ;

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Stanford Professors Urge Withdrawal From Fossil Fuel Investments

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