Tag Archives: news

Tim Kaine says a Dakota Access reroute would be “the right thing to do.”

by GuillermoCarpent Posted on November 8, 2016

It’s no surprise, really, as passing such a policy was always going to be an uphill climb, and in this case even climate activists were not unified behind it. Big business was against it too, of course.

I-732 was designed to be revenue-neutral: It would have taxed fossil fuels consumed in the state and returned the revenue to people and businesses by cutting Washington’s regressive sales tax, giving tax rebates to low-income working households, and cutting a tax for manufacturers. A grassroots group of volunteers got it onto the ballot and earned support from big names like climate scientist James Hansen and actor/activist Leonardo DiCaprio.

But other environmentalists and social justice activists in the state didn’t like this approach, and they got backing from their own big names: Naomi Klein and Van Jones. They want revenue from any carbon fee to be invested in clean energy, green jobs, and disadvantaged communities.

“There is great enthusiasm for climate action that invests in communities on the frontlines of climate change, but I-732 did not offer what’s really needed,” said Rich Stolz of OneAmerica, a civil rights group in the state. “This election made it clear that engaging voters of color is a necessity to win both nationally and here in Washington state.”

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Tim Kaine says a Dakota Access reroute would be “the right thing to do.”

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Are “I Voted” stickers bad for the planet?

by FeliciaWalthall Posted on November 8, 2016

It’s no surprise, really, as passing such a policy was always going to be an uphill climb, and in this case even climate activists were not unified behind it. Big business was against it too, of course.

I-732 was designed to be revenue-neutral: It would have taxed fossil fuels consumed in the state and returned the revenue to people and businesses by cutting Washington’s regressive sales tax, giving tax rebates to low-income working households, and cutting a tax for manufacturers. A grassroots group of volunteers got it onto the ballot and earned support from big names like climate scientist James Hansen and actor/activist Leonardo DiCaprio.

But other environmentalists and social justice activists in the state didn’t like this approach, and they got backing from their own big names: Naomi Klein and Van Jones. They want revenue from any carbon fee to be invested in clean energy, green jobs, and disadvantaged communities.

“There is great enthusiasm for climate action that invests in communities on the frontlines of climate change, but I-732 did not offer what’s really needed,” said Rich Stolz of OneAmerica, a civil rights group in the state. “This election made it clear that engaging voters of color is a necessity to win both nationally and here in Washington state.”

See the article here:

Are “I Voted” stickers bad for the planet?

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The Koch brothers and their buddies are trying to kill a carbon-tax ballot initiative in Washington state.

by BillyGrimshaw8 Posted on November 7, 2016

Cushing, Oklahoma, was shaken on Sunday night by a 5.0 magnitude temblor. About 40 to 50 buildings were damaged, some substantially, according to the Associated Press, but no major injuries have been reported. The quake was felt as far away as Illinois, Iowa, and Texas.

Cushing — aka the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World” — is home to one of the largest oil storage terminals in the world. In 2012, President Obama visited Cushing to promote his support for the oil and gas industry.

But that same oil and gas industry has spurred a surge of earthquakes in Oklahoma, which are triggered when drillers inject wastewater underground. In 2005, prior to the state’s current oil and gas boom, there was only one earthquake of magnitude 3.0 or higher in Oklahoma. In 2015, there were more than 900.

Just in the last week, there have been about two dozen quakes in the state. Luckily, no damage has been reported to the Cushing oil terminal. But how long will that luck last?

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The Koch brothers and their buddies are trying to kill a carbon-tax ballot initiative in Washington state.

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Even with climate pledges, the world’s on track to warm by more than 2 degrees.

by BonitaQGUN Posted on November 3, 2016

This is according to a new study in Science. That’s a sizable slab: Rose and Jack could have floated on a ’burg that big with room to spare (and Titanic would still end with a frozen hunk!).

If you live in the U.S., you are accountable for about 17 tons of CO2 a year. That’s roughly 1.4 tons a month, or one and a half Rose-and-Jack rafts every 30 days. Multiply that by 300 million people in the States, plus Europe, plus Australia, plus … you get the picture. In the last 30 years, we’ve lost enough ice to cover Texas twice over.

Thirty-two square feet per ton is a scary, but useful, statistic. It nails a number to our individual actions, the consequences of which might otherwise seem abstract, says Dirk Notz of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany.

For example, Notz offers, a round trip flight from New York to London knocks out 32 square feet of summer sea ice “for every single seat” — something to factor in when you’re calculating the price of a ticket home.

See more here – 

Even with climate pledges, the world’s on track to warm by more than 2 degrees.

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Fossil fuel workers want a piece of the growing renewable market.

by PamCarstensen83 Posted on November 2, 2016

The Republican candidate on Monday promoted his plan to purportedly save the government $100 billion over eight years. It involves cutting all federal spending on climate change programs, both domestic and international.

“We’re going to put America first,” Trump said at a Michigan rally. “That includes canceling billions in climate change spending for the United Nations, a number Hillary wants to increase, and instead use that money to provide for American infrastructure including clean water, clean air, and safety.”

As Bloomberg BNA reports, Trump didn’t give a precise tally for how he got to $100 billion:

[The] campaign press office said that the figure combined an estimate of what the Obama administration had spent on climate-related programs, the amount of U.S. contributions to an international climate fund that Trump would cancel, and a calculation of what Trump believes would be savings to the economy if Obama’s and Clinton’s climate policies were reversed.

That math, however, doesn’t work out: According to a 2014 report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, a global temperature increase of just 3 degrees C would cost the United States 1 percent of GDP, or $150 billion a year, by damaging public health and infrastructure and battling sea-level rise, stronger storms, declining crop yields, and increased drought and wildfires.

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Fossil fuel workers want a piece of the growing renewable market.

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Nightly News Takes a Dive on Issues This Year

by IvoryECCpmopww Posted on November 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Andrew Tyndall notes that the nightly news no longer seems to care about policy debates:

This year’s absence of issues is an accurate portrayal of the turf on which the election is being played out….If the candidates are not talking about the issues, the news media would be misrepresenting the contest to do so.

With just two weeks to go, issues coverage this year has been virtually non-existent…. No trade, no healthcare, no climate change, no drugs, no poverty, no guns, no infrastructure, no deficits. To the extent that these issues have been mentioned, it has been on the candidates’ terms, not on the networks’ initiative.

I disagree with this on two levels. First, Hillary Clinton has talked plenty about issues in the conventional sense that Tyndall means it: speeches that cover specific policy proposals, with detail to back them up. Only Donald Trump has declined to do this.

More broadly, both candidates have talked about issues. Trump talks all the time about trade, immigration, ISIS, and guns. Clinton talks about childcare, ISIS, health care, guns, and so forth. There are lots of character attacks too, but then, that’s usually the case. But just because issues are talked about in broad strokes doesn’t mean they’re not talked about. They are. The network news broadcasts just don’t want to risk losing their audiences by forcing them to pay attention to such boring stuff.

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Nightly News Takes a Dive on Issues This Year

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No, all of your friends haven’t gone to Standing Rock without you.

by HermanOneill Posted on October 31, 2016

That’s according to a new report by UNICEF, which found that nearly one in seven children in the world live in areas where outdoor air pollution is at least six times higher than international guidelines set by the World Health Organization.

The report also found that air pollution — primarily caused by fossil fuel burning, vehicle emissions, waste incineration, and dust — contributes to the deaths of about 600,000 kids under the age of 5 each year. The statistics are most dire in South Asia, where an estimated 620 million children live with dirty air.

Air pollution is especially harmful to children as their lungs are still developing and their respiratory tracks are more permeable than adults’. But as UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake points out, “Pollutants don’t only harm children’s developing lungs, they can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and permanently damage their developing brains — and, thus, their futures.”

UNICEF is calling for countries to take several steps to minimize risk to kids, including reducing pollution, increasing access to health care, monitoring air pollution levels, and keeping polluting facilities away from schools and playgrounds.

“We protect our children when we protect the quality of our air,” Lake says. “Both are central to our future.”

Excerpt from – 

No, all of your friends haven’t gone to Standing Rock without you.

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Fossil fuels will be heavily represented at this year’s U.N. climate talks.

by TiffinyLudwig Posted on October 31, 2016

That’s according to a new report by UNICEF, which found that nearly one in seven children in the world live in areas where outdoor air pollution is at least six times higher than international guidelines set by the World Health Organization.

The report also found that air pollution — primarily caused by fossil fuel burning, vehicle emissions, waste incineration, and dust — contributes to the deaths of about 600,000 kids under the age of 5 each year. The statistics are most dire in South Asia, where an estimated 620 million children live with dirty air.

Air pollution is especially harmful to children as their lungs are still developing and their respiratory tracks are more permeable than adults’. But as UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake points out, “Pollutants don’t only harm children’s developing lungs, they can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and permanently damage their developing brains — and, thus, their futures.”

UNICEF is calling for countries to take several steps to minimize risk to kids, including reducing pollution, increasing access to health care, monitoring air pollution levels, and keeping polluting facilities away from schools and playgrounds.

“We protect our children when we protect the quality of our air,” Lake says. “Both are central to our future.”

Link:

Fossil fuels will be heavily represented at this year’s U.N. climate talks.

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One farmer gunned down another, apparently after a confrontation over an herbicide.

by EugenioBach Posted on October 31, 2016

Non-white or non-male riders, however, may have a harder time. That’s the conclusion of a new study in which researchers had students in Seattle and Boston request rides on specific routes from Uber, Lyft, and taxi-hailing app Flywheel.

Here’s how it works: When you request an Uber, the driver can only see your location and star rating. After that driver accepts, they get your name and picture, too — and may cancel if they don’t like what they see. Researchers zeroed in on cancellations to measure discrimination, says Don MacKenzie, one of the study’s coauthors.

For the Boston study, riders used preset identities with names like Keisha, Rasheed, Allison, and Todd. The male riders who used stereotypically black names saw a cancellation rate of 11.2 percent, compared to the 4.5 percent cancellation rate of those using white names. Female riders using white names had a cancellation rate of 5.4 percent, while female riders with black names experienced a cancellation rate of 8.4 percent, nearly double the cancellation rate for white male riders (MacKenzie points out that difference is not statistically significant).

Finally, women were sometimes subjected to unnecessarily long rides from talkative drivers — resulting in lost time and money for those riders.

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One farmer gunned down another, apparently after a confrontation over an herbicide.

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Leonardo DiCaprio’s new climate change film is now streaming.

by RussellGoe3035 Posted on October 31, 2016

Non-white or non-male riders, however, may have a harder time. That’s the conclusion of a new study in which researchers had students in Seattle and Boston request rides on specific routes from Uber, Lyft, and taxi-hailing app Flywheel.

Here’s how it works: When you request an Uber, the driver can only see your location and star rating. After that driver accepts, they get your name and picture, too — and may cancel if they don’t like what they see. Researchers zeroed in on cancellations to measure discrimination, says Don MacKenzie, one of the study’s coauthors.

For the Boston study, riders used preset identities with names like Keisha, Rasheed, Allison, and Todd. The male riders who used stereotypically black names saw a cancellation rate of 11.2 percent, compared to the 4.5 percent cancellation rate of those using white names. Female riders using white names had a cancellation rate of 5.4 percent, while female riders with black names experienced a cancellation rate of 8.4 percent, nearly double the cancellation rate for white male riders (MacKenzie points out that difference is not statistically significant).

Finally, women were sometimes subjected to unnecessarily long rides from talkative drivers — resulting in lost time and money for those riders.

Taken from:

Leonardo DiCaprio’s new climate change film is now streaming.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, solar power, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Leonardo DiCaprio’s new climate change film is now streaming.