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One man wants us all to sh*t equally. So he started World Toilet Day

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Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged Chocolate, interview, king, living, movement, organization, Toilet, women, work, world-toilet | Comments Off

Phew! Texas textbook publisher ditches climate denial

by MuhammaMarler Posted on November 14, 2014

Phew! Texas textbook publisher ditches climate denial

Source:
Under Pressure, Texas Textbook Publisher Caves on Climate Denial

14 Nov 2014 4:17 PM

Phew! Texas textbook publisher ditches climate denial

There’s been a lot of good news this week. Here’s one more reason celebrate: In Texas’ public schools, where the fight to include creationism and cast doubt on 97 percent of climate scientists has been long, arduous, and absurd, science may have gotten the upper hand in science education!

Pearson, the world’s largest education publisher, collapsed under pressure from such bleeding-heart liberals as the National Center for Science Education and officially slashed some murky climate denialism from its Texas textbook, reports the National Journal:

Here’s how the revised Pearson fifth-grade social studies textbooks teaches global warming:

Burning fuels like gasoline releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, which occurs both naturally and through human activities, is called a greenhouse gas, because it traps heat. As the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases increase, the Earth warms. Scientists warn that climate change, caused by this warming, will pose challenges to society.

And here’s what the earlier version said:

Burning oil to run cars also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some scientists believe that this carbon dioxide could lead to a slow heating of Earth’s overall climate. This temperature change is known as global warming or climate change. Scientists disagree about what is causing climate change.

Ummmm, yeah. It’s 2014, Texas. Scientists don’t disagree about that. OK — they disagree about as much as they disagree about the health impact of smoking cigarettes. Or about the “theory,” of, say, gravity. Anyway.

The bad news (sorrrrryyyy) is that there is one zany holdout in the science textbook world that could still keep Texas schoolkids from factual information. Under similar pressure, McGraw-Hill, the world’s second–largest textbook publisher, changed the last half of “Scientists agree that Earth’s climate is changing. They do not agree on what is causing the change” to “Not all individuals, however, agree on the causes of these changes.” But its book still asks students to analyze two different points of view on climate change: one from the authors of the IPCC report and another from the conservative think tank Heartland Institute.

The Texas Board of Education will vote on what textbooks it’ll approve next week. If McGraw-Hill’s book gets the green light, it could make its rounds across Texas schools and beyond. But hey — Pearson’s book has a good shot, and at least the world’s largest education publisher still believes in education.

, National Journal.

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Here are the worst places to live in the U.S., and climate change isn’t helping

by MervinValenti Posted on November 6, 2014

House Warming

Here are the worst places to live in the U.S., and climate change isn’t helping

By Amelia Urry

6 Nov 2014 6:07 PM

Here are the worst places to live in the U.S., and climate change isn’t helping

From wildfires and drought in the Southwest to hurricanes and floods on the Eastern seaboard, sometimes it seems like there’s nowhere left to hide from climate change. Well, we can’t (read: don’t want to) tell you where you should go, but at least now we can name the 50 places to live in the U.S. where you are MOST at risk for natural disaster — including the sorts of disasters climate change is expected to throw at us in the coming years.

The Weather Channel, despite some unfortunate early ties to the climate-denying grandpa you never had, can do some pretty impressive stuff from time to time. For example, sifting though 18 years worth of data from every county or parish in the U.S. — all 3,111 of them — taking into account everything from flood and fire risk, to how much it costs to heat or cool a home, to how many weather-related property damages and deaths occur on average. And while none of this could have made for cheering subject matter, 50 places definitely came out on top of this Olympic podium of suck. Let’s take a fly-by tour of a few of them:

Orleans Parish, La.

Saving the worst for first, Orleans Parish, La., tops this terrible list of places, with a whopping $21.6 billion in damage, most of that supplied by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Even more significant are the hundreds of people (around 215) who died in their homes in New Orleans during the storm — a tragic combination of natural fury and poor disaster preparedness.

Before we move on, it’s worth mentioning that five of the counties on this list are in Louisiana, and a full eight are in Mississippi. We won’t go through all of those, because they are bummers of a similar sort, But know that when it comes to flood damage and struggling infrastructure, the low-lying lands of the lower 48 have the stage set for disaster

Ocean County, N.J.

Bossi

When Superstorm Sandy made landfall in Ocean County, in 2012, it brought desolation down on the Jersey Shore to the tune of $10 billion, and earned the area sixth place in this terrible race. While plenty of towns on the East Coast had it just as bad, including Monmouth County just to the north, Ocean County faces a second set of risks as well — these ones from land. Just inland from the hurricane-wrecked shore are the Pine Barrens, a bizarrely pristine forest with a moderate risk of wildfire. Between all that water and fire, you might want to just keep taking that turnpike outta Dodge.

Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska

Wikimedia Commons

Coming in at No. 13 on the list of worst places to be, this large swath of Alaska is the most sparsely populated county in America, with about 6,000 people spread across an area the size of Germany. And no wonder so few people want to live there — 99.8 percent of the days in Yukon-Koyukuk are “heating degree days” with average temperatures below 65 degrees F. Couple the cost of keeping warm with risk of wildfires in the summers AND plenty of miscellaneous weather-related damage, and you get one hell of an inhospitable landscape.

Bright side, bright side … uh, if the polar vortex keeps wobbling around, maybe the Yukon-Koyukukans will catch a bit of a break this winter.

Marin County, Calif.

John Kim

Marin County is one of the wealthiest places in the U.S. — with the fifth highest income-per-capita in 2009 — but it is also, trust us, one of the WORST places you could possibly live (the 17th worst place, to be specific). Not only will your view of the Bay be marred by a sprawling multimillion-dollar mansion, but you will also be living on a spiderweb of several major faults that pass under this region. Massive earthquakes in 1989 and 1906 caused billions of dollars of damage and cost hundreds of Marin residents’ lives, and they could do so again.

What’s more: All that ocean-front property and flood-prone picturesque valleys leave Marin vulnerable to all kinds of water risks, especially during rain-heavy winter storms.

Oh, yeah, and though wildfires haven’t plagued the county too badly in the past, the historic ongoing drought in California will almost certainly make this whole region a little hotter-under-the-collar.

Washoe County, Nev.

Jay

There are lots of reasons not to live in Reno, but here’s another: Despite being smack-dab in the middle of a desert state, Washoe County is so chock-full of lakes and snow-fed rivers that it is expected to experience a disastrous flood every 50 years, a fact which earns it spot 22 out of 50 on this list. The last flood in 1997 inundated countless homes as well as the airport, and cost the district $500 million. If that was a 50-year flood, that means you still have 30 years and change to pick up roots and move somewhere a little less extreme. Then again, why wait — any place whose official motto is “The Biggest Little City In The World” doesn’t need climate change’s help to make it suck more.

—-

For the rest of the list, you’ll have to turn to the professionals. Let’s just hope when it comes to the terrible futures in store for the stars-and-stripes, these weather forecasters are as famously wrong as ever.

Source:
Worst Places to Own a Home

, Weather Channel.

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Giant hog farms are making people sick. Here’s why it’s a civil rights issue.

by JoleenPercy Posted on November 6, 2014

WHOLE HOG

Giant hog farms are making people sick. Here’s why it’s a civil rights issue.

Source:
Density Of Industrial Hog Farms In North Carolina Prompts Civil Rights Investigation

6 Nov 2014 9:23 AM

Giant hog farms are making people sick. Here’s why it’s a civil rights issue.

The foul stench and pollution caused by North Carolina’s industrial swine farms has long impacted the quality of life — and the health — of nearby residents. This is a civil rights issue, according to environmental justice advocates. Earthjustice filed a complaint in September against the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), alleging that the pollution disproportionately affects African-American, Latino, and Native American communities living near the farms.

Since DENR gets money from the EPA, the complaint made its demands under the auspices of the 1964 Civil Rights Act:

Complainants hope that in the year 2014, the Office of Civil Rights will enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and EPA’s implementing regulations, and will respond with the full force of law — withdrawing DENR’s funding, if need be — to protect communities of color from the injustice of being forced to live and work near inadequately regulated industrial pollution sources.

And yes, we’re talking about the injustice of a whole lotta poop, but it’s no joke. More than 2,000 high-density farms in eastern North Carolina store the urine and feces of 9.5 million swine in “open-air cesspools” and then spray all that liquid manure onto nearby fields. That means nitrates, harmful bacteria, and parasites leach into the groundwater. Ammonia and hydrogen sulfide and feces particles can permeate the air. Nearby residents — who, according to a recent study on the issue, are at least 1.5 times as likely to be people of color — get asthma attacks, bronchitis, runny noses and eyes. There’s even been a study linking North Carolina’s hog farms to high blood pressure. Ugh.

The civil rights complaint is new territory for the DENR, reports the News & Observer:

DENR spokesman Drew Elliot said the agency is reviewing the complaint. “This civil rights process is not one we’re very familiar with,” he said. “It’s not something we deal with very much.”

Ouch. Well, perhaps it’s time they did. There are a lot of complaints to be leveraged against factory farms, but that certainly includes their impact on the folks living downwind.

, MintPress News.

Environmental groups: NC swine farms discriminate against minorities

, The News & Observer.

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In the fight for bike-safe streets, we’ll need everyone to join the ride

by HildegaWicks Posted on November 1, 2014

In the fight for bike-safe streets, we’ll need everyone to join the ride

Source:
New Report: Bike Equity Today

1 Nov 2014 8:05 AM

In the fight for bike-safe streets, we’ll need everyone to join the ride

At the mention of “bicycling advocates,” you probably picture dread-headed hippies at a Critical Mass ride, or yuppie professionals whining about their commutes. But it’s just not true. Not only do people of all backgrounds totally bike, but there are also tons of folks out there making the movement toward bike-friendly cities a lot more diverse.

To wit: A new, comprehensive “bike equity” report put out by the League of American Bicyclists profiles dozens of groups from El Paso to Milwaukee to New York that are bringing more bikes to people, more people to bike policy conversations, and more conversations about race, class, and equity to the conversation about bikes.

In Santa Barbara, Calif., for instance, Bici Centro brings affordable bike repair to the largest group of cyclists in the city: low-income Latino commuters. New York City’s Local Spokes gathers all kinds of people together from the Lower East Side and Chinatown to brainstorm ideas for bike programing and street design. Cycles for Change in St. Paul, Minn., has a Bike Library that lends bikes to low-income communities, and a program that helps first-time adult riders — often refugees and immigrants — “become the most amazing bike advocates.” (It’s also one of many bike coalitions across the country with an “earn-a-bike” program, which asks folks to volunteer a few hours at a repair shop before taking a bike home).

The report highlights all this and way, way more, and weaves in some powerful interviews with folks behind bike equity. Among them: Seattle’s Ed Ewing and Milwaukee Bicycle Works co-founder Keith Holt, who points out that shifting some of this stuff is going to take more than building bike lanes:

There are some folks who just say, “Black people don’t ride bikes.” I often ask, “How do you know this?” If that’s the premise, then that becomes the narrative everywhere. …

The general belief out there is, “If we just put more bike lanes in communities of color or make sure more low-income folks have a voice at the table that’s the big key for this.” Honestly, I think that’s part of the equation. … But I know that realistic access to affordable bike ownership and repair will make a huge impact, too. …

Bottom line: if there is no bike shop in a neighborhood, it’s much more of a challenge for someone to start and continue biking.”

Because “bike equity,” as wonky as that sounds, is about making sure cycle-friendly cities are actually friendly to all cyclists — and that bike advocacy includes all voices.

If not, well, bikes will never achieve world domination. And that’d be a damn shame.

, League of American Bicyclists.

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Yes, candy is evil, but denying yourself on Halloween will only make you healthy and boring

by OLDLeviucxris Posted on October 30, 2014

I Want Candy

Yes, candy is evil, but denying yourself on Halloween will only make you healthy and boring

By Sam Bliss

30 Oct 2014 9:21 AM

Yes, candy is evil, but denying yourself on Halloween will only make you healthy and boring

Candy is bad for you and often unethical. It’s not even very satisfying. But here’s the thing: My mouth loves it. Three sentences into writing about candy, my salivary glands are spilling slobber. I’m craving a king-size Kit-Kat, or at least a bite of Krackle.

Last week, the Huffington Post blog alerted us once again to an ancient evil long practiced by the mega-confectioners that rule Halloween: Candy, like nearly everything that comes in a package, is made with lots of palm oil, a.k.a. orangutan blood. You probably know pervasive palm products arrive in our homes thanks to rainforest habitat hack-downs and horribly treated workers. But! Buying less candy is NOT the answer. Why not? Because — as fellow Gristfellow Eve Andrews reminded us in an story about the absurdity of lamenting toast’s environmental impact — conscious eating does not equal life hating.

The palm oil news (newsflash: not news) is disappointing but far from surprising. These days, candy makers serve up more tricks than treats. They trick well-intentioned buyers with meaningless green labels and fat-free candy corn. A few years back, Hershey’s got caught tricking foreign students into a “summer work and travel” program that’s effectively a summer of slavery in the company’s packing plants.

Earlier this week, funny guy John Oliver brilliantly reminded us how the sugar industry sneaks sugar into, well, everything, exacerbating our well-documented health problems. His point, though, was one Grist made four years ago, with a piece called “In defense of candy“: The problem is not sweets, it’s the candification of the rest of our food — from high-fructose corn syrupy drinks to mountains of sweetener in all types of secretly sugary packaged foods (like “healthy” granola bars and freezer pizza).

So: Big Candy is about as evil as the rest of Big Food, but candy itself is most definitely not the problem. And, even if it were, we’re not about to forego gobblin’ up Gobstoppers in our goblin suits this Hallow’s Eve. Giving out bullshit-healthy “treats” like Nutri-Grain bars is a good way to get your house TP’ed. Taking the actual-health-food route isn’t any better: It’s Halloween. (Ask your dentist if anyone likes her better for handing out baby carrots.)

Which all begs the question: What sweets do we buy for trick-or-treaters (and then inevitably keep for ourselves to snarf all evening and into the next week)? Spendy ethical chocolate, perhaps from a fair-trade cooperative? Soulless vegan M&M knockoffs? Home-cooked almond joy?

These are all yummy options for the mindful sweet-tooth, but is your 7-year-old neighbor in a Batman costume really going to notice he’s eating a carefully crafted eco-candy in the three-second interval between grabbing the wrapper and emptying its contents directly into his esophagus?

The HuffPost article misses the mark. After painstakingly describing the myriad threats palm oil poses to life and the climate, Diana Donlon of the Center for Food Safety earnestly touts a list of less tricky treats that won’t cost the planet as much, but will probably cost your wallet more than you want to spend on candy.

The solution isn’t to deny ourselves what we love and then spend wads of money on things we don’t love much more but enable us to emit smug out our buttholes. And the solution is definitely not to boycott candy. We all have sugar addictions to feed (guilty as charged).

Allow me to pontificate for one moment: In the fight for a more ecological and fair economy (and food system), voting with our puny candy change does not do much to destabilize the status quo. In fact, shitty candy is the exact right place for Big Sugar. Better to enjoy your once-a-year-binge. Or hell, fuel up on partially hydrogenated palm kernels any old time for a sugar-powered protest against deforestation and human rights abuses — or a transparent food system that doesn’t coddle Big Sugar.

In fact, leave the candy aside (or in my mouth): A better celebration of Halloween might start by not contributing to the $350 million Americans spend on brand-new costumes for pets. But I’ll save that for next Halloween (or tomorrow). Until then, check out all the great ideas from Grist’s guide to a green ‘ween.

Just remember: No handing out pumpkin hummus to trick-or-treaters, you ignorant hipsters.

Source:
Trick or Treat? The Frightening Climate Costs of Halloween Candy

, Huffington Post Blog.

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Uber says half its drivers make $90K a year — yeah, right.

by KathrinFitchett Posted on October 28, 2014

Uber says half its drivers make $90K a year — yeah, right.

While we’re technically pro- anything that can convince people to ditch their cars, we can’t ignore that Uber has come under fire for underpaying its workers, undercutting taxi regulations, and just generally being a pushy dudebro tech company.

Recent fare cuts have driven drivers to the streets to ask for better treatment, even as the company burns rubber in the profits department: In just four years, the upstarty start-up has gone from 0 to $17 billion, and it’s still growing to the tune of 50,000 new jobs a month.

But when the company claims that UberX drivers in New York City make a median income of $90,776 per year — meaning the average Joe with a Prius and some free time could theoretically catapult to the top third of the city’s earners — something smells a little off. Some have already pointed out that this number is gross income, before all the expenses that drivers are expected to cover kick in — like, you know, gas.

Luckily — for us, because this sounds like a lot of work — Slate’s Alison Griswold took a hard look at the math, then talked to some actual UberX drivers, and now she is calling shenanigans:

[UberX driver Jesus] Garay says that on average, a ride takes him 20 minutes from start to finish: five minutes to reach the pickup location, five to wait for the customer, and 10 to drive to the destination. For a trip of that length, Garay says he’ll make $10 or $11. “So if you’re busy, you’re going to make three rides in an hour,” he explains. “That’s $30 an hour. That’s before commission, taxes, the Black Car Fund, before you take off your gas …”

For a driver like Garay, all those deductions mean an initial $30 in fares leaves him with about $21 for the hour. According to statements Garay provided Slate, he made $1,163.30 in fares for 40 hours of work in the week ending Oct. 13. From that, he took home just under $850. In any given week, Garay expects to lose a bit more than $350 to gas, car cleanings, insurance, maintenance, and parking costs. That leaves him with about $480 before income taxes. Effectively, he’s making $12 an hour.

That’s still not terrible, but it sure isn’t $90k. And there’s more. When Griswold just flat-out asks an Uber rep to show her ONE driver in NYC who is making the alleged median income, she got nothing. Here’s a quick math refresher — “median” means half of the drivers in NYC should be making MORE than that. So why is it so hard to dig up just one?

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Uber says half its drivers make $90K a year — yeah, right.

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People Are Trying to Sell Cinnamon Bark as an Ebola Cure

by ShayneMagee Posted on October 16, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Marion Nestle reports that several supplement manufacturers are selling vitamins that promise to prevent or treat Ebola. The claims caught the attention of the FDA, which has issued warning letters to three of the manufacturers: Natural Solutions Foundation, Young Living, and DoTERRA International LLC. The agency lists specific claims it finds worrisome; for example, on a Young Living consultant’s website, “Ebola Virus can not live in the presence of cinnamon bark.”

Here’s a screenshot from Natural Solutions Foundations’ website:

An article on the Natural Solutions site talks about “the intentional introduction of Ebola into the United States by what will appear to be ISIS terrorists.” It continues, “And it will happen soon, since we know from Dr. Rima’s research that Ebola can become an airborne disease in temperate climates, such as North America’s coming winter.” It urges readers to prepare by stocking up on supplements that contain nanoparticles of silver: “The only protection we have against this new level of tyranny is making sure we do not get sick!!! The best way to do that is to make sure that EVERYONE you can reach has Nano Silver and knows how to use it.”

Another supposed natural Ebola cure making the rounds: Vitamin C. Nestle found this gem on an alternative health information site called NaturalHealth365, which claims that a giant dose of vitamin C can cure Ebola (though it doesn’t actually sell Vitamin C):

NaturalHealth365

It’s not terribly surprising that supplement manufacturers have seized on Ebola. A new Harvard School of Public Health poll has found that 38 percent of Americans (up from 25 percent a few months ago) “are now concerned that they or someone in their immediate family may get sick with Ebola over the next year.” That’s quite a market.

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People Are Trying to Sell Cinnamon Bark as an Ebola Cure

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Why more roads = more traffic jams

by Genie1476e Posted on October 15, 2014

Why more roads = more traffic jams

Source:
Why the 405 isn’t any faster with more lanes

15 Oct 2014 4:28 PM

Why more roads = more traffic jams

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Adding more roads — and more lanes on those roads — does absolutely nothing for gridlock. It’s counterintuitive, perhaps, but it’s true: Five years, $1 billion, and at least one new traffic-hell moniker later (“Carmageddon”), L.A. drivers on the 405 freeway actually added a minute to their daily commutes, in spite (or because?) of a snazzy new carpool lane.

From Southern California Public Radio:

That outcome is probably not surprising to economist Matthew Turner.

Turner co-authored a study that showed a one-to-one correlation in road capacity and the amount of drivers on the road.

“There’s a lot of trips that you don’t take because you don’t want to drive when it’s congested,” he says, “and if it’s little bit less congested there’s a lot of trips people are willing to take.”

There are just too many cars, and traffic has as much to do with human psychology as it does infrastructure. If we attempt to relieve gridlock, all we get is more drivers, and more gridlock. As Umbra put it in a recent post, carpool lanes are “designed to make driving easier. Yes, they have some environmental bennies, but they don’t do enough to attack our main climate goal: curbing driving, period.”

The only thing that will actually help curb traffic, according to Turner, is charging people to drive at rush hour. (He claims it’s worked in Europe and Asia). This kind of disincentive may be just as important as alt-transport incentives. Hit us where it hurts, and we may choose not to drive so much. ’Nuff said.

, Southern California Public Radio.

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East Coasters, prepare for three decades of epic flooding

by FletaJennings Posted on October 8, 2014

East Coasters, prepare for three decades of epic flooding

By Sam Bliss

8 Oct 2014 4:38 PM

East Coasters, prepare for three decades of epic flooding

A new report finds that, thanks to sea-level rise, tidal floods are bathing East Coast cities more than ever. And within the lifetime of a 30-year home mortgage, ever-higher high tides will swamp coastal communities with much more frequency and severity, according to projections based on analysis of 52 tide gauges between Maine and Texas.

Suzanne Goldberg of The Guardian provides the deets:

The report, “Encroaching Tides: How Sea Level Rise and Tidal Flooding Threaten U.S. East and Gulf Coast Communities over the Next 30 Years,” from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), found most of the towns on America’s east coast will see triple the number of flooding events by 2030.

By 2045, those towns will see 10 times as many tidal floods — and those floods will seep further inland, and last longer, the researchers said.

The study also highlights what coastal cities are already doing to protect their shorelines, calling for state and federal help to plan, fund, and implement resilience projects ASAP. The UCS authors acknowledge that rapid, steep cuts in carbon emissions are probably the only way to reduce the need to move people and structures further inland to higher ground.

But they also point out that a surge in tidal flooding is “essentially guaranteed” while the heat-trapping gases we’ve already set free hang out in the atmosphere doing their warming thing. The report’s call to action: Fortify seaside communities against the coming onslaught of water, and reduce carbon emissions to make sure low-lying areas aren’t permanently submerged later on. At the same time. Quickly.

Yeah, the heavy dose of realism is a bit of a downer for beach lovers and coastal dwellers. At least Climate Central made you a fun interactive map to preview future damage from sea-level rise.

Source:
Encroaching Tides

, Union of Concerned Scientists.

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