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Cardinal Defends Hobby Lobby: "All You Have to Do Is Walk into a 7-11" for Contraceptives

by DarnellFlick Posted on April 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Sunday, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, culture warrior extraordinaire, made a curious argument for why the Supreme Court should allow Hobby Lobby to eliminate the morning-after pill from its employee health care plan: if you want contraceptives, “all you have to do is walk into a 7-11 or any shop on any street in America and have access to them.”

The East Coast’s top Catholic made his comments Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “I think they’re just true Americans,” he told host Norah O’Donnell of Hobby Lobby’s owners, who claim that providing emergency contraceptive pills violates their religious beliefs. “Is the ability to buy contraceptives, that are now widely available—my Lord, all you have to do is walk into a 7-11 or any shop on any street in America and have access to them—is that right to access those and have them paid for, is that such a towering good that it would suffocate the rights of conscience?”

Couple of things:

The owners of Hobby Lobby are proposing to eliminate one kind of contraception from the company’s employee health care plans: the morning-after pill. The Greens, who own the company, do not have a problem with all contraception. In fact, the company plan still covers birth control pills.
Birth control pills are a form of contraception that isn’t available without a prescription. They are not sold on any shop on any street in America.
If Dolan is talking about emergency contraception, we would note that only one type of morning-after pill for sale in the US without a prescription: Plan B One Step and its generics.
These are also not sold on any shop on any street in America.
These are not sold at 7-11.

It’s almost as if Dolan doesn’t know very much about the contraceptives he opposes. Either that, or he hasn’t been to a 7-11 since giving up Go-Go Taquitos for Lent.

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Cardinal Defends Hobby Lobby: "All You Have to Do Is Walk into a 7-11" for Contraceptives

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Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

by LeviCfiasgh Posted on April 3, 2014

Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

By

WCN 24/7

Could it be that frackers are die-hard Ravens fans? That might explain their cavalier attitude about the health of citizens in Steeler Country.

Kidding! Money is the motive, yinz – and if Pennsylvanians are exposed to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals in the making of it, who cares?

An alarming new study by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, published in the journal Reviews on Environmental Health, finds that current methods and tools used to measure harmful emissions from fracking wells don’t accurately assess health threats – not even close, in fact.

Federal and state officials tend to measure and report emissions in big-picture terms – tons of methane released per year, for example. Another method is to track hourly emissions over a given day or week. These might not capture rapid and brief increases in chemical exposure, which can cause real harm to bodily systems. SPEHP reports that emissions near drilling sites can fluctuate wildly, and toxic chemical particles can reach high levels of concentration in the air in a very short period of time – as little as a minute or two – and then drop back down. This can occur repeatedly throughout drilling, but might not be captured by the tools or methods customarily used to measure emissions.

SPEHP researchers collected data on levels of four toxic chemicals in 14 households near fracking sites in southwestern Pennsylvania, and found that contamination was concentrated at peak levels – three times the median level of concentration – about 30 percent of the time, but in spurts. These short blasts of contamination can go undetected by tools customarily used to measure emissions.

Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene are all toxic substances released into the air from shale drilling. So, what can go wrong if one is exposed to peak levels of these chemicals? Glad you asked! The health effects can include “respiratory, neurologic, and dermal responses as well as vascular bleeding, abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting.”

If that weren’t bad enough, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has a flawed system for responding to citizen complaints about emissions, as ProPublica reports:

[T]he agency’s own manual for dealing with complaints is explicit about what to do if someone reports concerns about a noxious odor, but is not at that very moment experiencing the smell: “DO NOT REGISTER THE COMPLAINT.”

When a resident does report a real-time alarm about the air quality in or around their home, the agency typically has two weeks to conduct an investigation. If no odor is detected when investigators arrive on the scene, the case is closed.

In light of the SPEHP findings, this response falls very much short of what would be needed to accurately determine whether there’s a health threat, as it not only fails to address the issue immediately, but also doesn’t account for the intermittency of spikes in exposure.

ProPublica reports that the DEP has been criticized for bowing to energy company interests rather than serving Pennsylvania citizens.

Activists and environmental groups have accused the agency of being overly deferential to the gas industry, and defensive and slow moving in its dealings with the public.

“It was very top down, very secretive and paranoid about who the enemies were,” said [George] Jugovic, [a] former agency official, who left the department when Corbett succeeded Rendell as governor. “The control on information was significant.”

Gov. Tom Corbett (R) has an impressive history of wooing gas companies to Pennsylvania. Now, these companies have made themselves at home enough to dump all their shit in the air without so much as a “whoops!”, and sure enough, it’s making some of those unlucky enough to live near fracking sites sick. Maybe in between bouts of vomiting, Pennsylvanians can try to enjoy some complimentary pizza.


Source
In Fracking Fight, a Worry About How Best to Measure Health Threats, ProPublica

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

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Design Lampshades for Solar Lanterns to Help People in Need

by kastijoo8753 Posted on January 17, 2014

During Panasonic’s Cut Out the Darkness project, visitors to the company’s website can design lampshades for solar lanterns that will be donated to regions without electricity. Photo: Panasonic

Want to light up the life of someone who needs it? Now you can. Panasonic’s Cut Out the Darkness project allows visitors to the company’s website to design lampshades that could be sent along with solar lanterns to those who live in areas without access to electricity.

Worldwide, one in five people lives without electricity. Those people face a number of economic and health problems, according to Panasonic, since they can’t perform basic tasks like studying in the evening or receive medical treatment at night. Additionally, many people in these regions use kerosene lamps, which pose fire risks and cause health issues from the smoke.

Panasonic first became involved with this issue through its 100 Thousand Solar Lanterns initiative, which aims to donate 100,000 solar lanterns to those without electricity by 2018, the company’s 100th anniversary. These solar lanterns charge during the day and provide light at night. They also reduce CO2 emissions, according to a company press release. In 2013, Panasonic kicked off the project by donating 8,000 solar lanterns to nonprofits, humanitarian groups and refugee camps in Asia and Africa.

In 2013, Panasonic donated 8,000 solar LED lanterns throughout Asia and Africa. Photo: Panasonic

Now, to raise awareness about the difficulties faced by residents of regions without electricity and to involve people with the company’s work, Panasonic is asking its website visitors to get creative and design images for lampshades using paper-cut techniques. You don’t necessarily have to be handy with scissors, since the designs are made virtually using a Web application — all folding, drawing and cutting are done with the click of a button.

A Web application allows users to easily make their own cutout designs. Photo: Panasonic

In February, people can vote for their favorite designs, and the top 100 will be turned into lampshades and donated with the solar lanterns. Panasonic plans to transport the donated solar lanterns and shades to recipients in March.

Eleven recognized paper-cut artists from around the world have also contributed designs to support the project — check out their work for inspiration.

To participate by creating a design or voting, visit the Cut Out the Darkness project’s home page.

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Design Lampshades for Solar Lanterns to Help People in Need

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A Year of Miracles – Marianne Williamson

by Myrna Posted on December 31, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

A Year of Miracles

Daily Devotions and Reflections

Marianne Williamson

Genre: Spirituality

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: December 31, 2013

Publisher: HarperOne

Seller: HarperCollins


Marianne Williamson, author of the bestselling classic A Return to Love and world-renowned teacher, has taught millions around the world an incredible secret: you can transform your life and the world by simply changing how you think. Our thoughts hold our destiny. In A Year of Miracles , she provides 365 reflections and devotions that offer guidance and spiritual support for following the path of love. These readings help you to remember, each day, that you are not alone, that the universe is alive and ready to shower you with help and miracles when you strive to put your best self forward. Reading these daily morsels of wisdom will help you stay focused, hopeful, and centered—and open your eyes to all the ways God wants to help and bless you. Expect a miracle every day!

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A Year of Miracles – Marianne Williamson

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Quote of the Day: I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to….Um….

by EleanoreStorkey Posted on December 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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From Sarah Palin, five days after defending Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson for his anti-gay statements in a GQ interview:

I haven’t read the article. I don’t know exactly how he said it.

That’s a shocker, isn’t it? But no matter. For Palin, this is basically affinity marketing. It doesn’t really matter what Robertson said, only that he represents the kind of right-thinking real Americans that Palin fancies herself a spokesman for.

And as long as I’ve now broken my vow not to comment on this idiocy (or Pajama Boy or Justine Sacco), here’s something I’ve been idly wondering about. Since I’m not a real American, I don’t watch Duck Dynasty, but I’ve seen a few episodes here and there while channel surfing. And even from just a few minutes’ viewing it was pretty obvious that it was very heavily edited. These guys clearly have a lot of seriously un-PC views, and A&E is pretty careful to make sure that none of them end up on the air. They prefer lovable old coots to a bunch of backwoods culture warriors.

In other words, the lack of anything even remotely political on the show seems pretty plainly artificial. Right? So it surely wasn’t a surprise to A&E that Phil Robertson has the views he has. I’ll bet they have miles of tape that ended up on the cutting room floor because it was likely to offend someone.

Anyway, I’m curious: Am I off base about this? It was practically the first thing that crossed my mind when I first saw an episode of the show. Is it really as obvious as I think, or did I jump to a conclusion I shouldn’t have?

UPDATE: Actually, it sounds like I might have been off base about this. It turns out that the whole Duck Dynasty redneck schtick is much more an invention than I realized, and the show is tightly scripted (not just edited) before the season even begins. That said, it’s still a virtual certainty that A&E knew Phil Robertson’s views on hot button cultural issues perfectly well. In fact it seems more likely than not that this entire controversy was deliberately engineered by A&E to generate publicity. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me, anyway.

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Quote of the Day: I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to….Um….

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USDA Report: Climate Change Threatens Agriculture

by Posted on February 12, 2013

USDA Report: Climate Change Threatens Agriculture

Posted 12 February 2013 in

National

The USDA has issued a new report which concludes that rising global temperatures will have acute, negative effects on US agriculture, including decreased crop yields and tremendous costs to farmers in the form of new pests and weeds.

Renewable fuel is working, right now, to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to changing climate patterns and threaten agriculture. Last year, renewable fuel use slashed GHG emissions from vehicles on America’s roads by 33 million metric tons.

Here’s what you need to know from USDA:

The climate is changing because of fossil fuel emissions, including those from oil:

Burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and a variety of agricultural practices and industrial processes are rapidly increasing the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. These changes in atmospheric composition are increasing temperatures, altering the timing and distribution of precipitation, and affecting terrestrial and marine ecosystems (p. 23).

Climate change will cause more droughts at home and around the globe:

Climate change projections into the future suggest an increased variability of temperature and precipitation…[and] emerging patterns project increased incidence of areas experiencing droughts and periods of more intense precipitation (p. 5).

Rising temperatures will affect food production in the US and hunger globally:

Crops … will be affected by increased exposure to extreme temperature events and increased risk of exceeding the maximum temperature thresholds, potentially leading to catastrophic losses (p. 6).

Livestock production in the US will also be impacted:

Changing climatic conditions affect animal agriculture in four primary ways: (1) feed-grain production, availability and price; (2) pastures and forage crop production and quality; (3) animal health, growth and reproduction; and (4) disease and pest distributions (p. 4).

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Community health centers rise up from toxic brownfields

by Myrna Posted on December 12, 2012

Community health centers rise up from toxic brownfields

By Susie Cagle

If poor communities aren’t living in the shadow of active industrial pollution, they’re often living in its graveyard. Industrial polluted brownfields are fenced and festering from California to Maine, frequently situated near low-income residents. When developers come to clean up and build on the sites, too often they plan projects that will push out rather than benefit the people who live nearby.

Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection

A brownfield in Worcester, Mass.

But today The New York Times points to a different kind of trend in brownfields development: building health centers for low-income local residents on sites formerly occupied by meatpacking plants, gas stations, and factories. These kinds of projects stand to bolster communities, not just property values, and they’re still serious investment opportunities for health-care companies.

[There’s] a nationwide trend to replace contaminated tracts in distressed neighborhoods with health centers , in essence taking a potential source of health problems for a community and turning it into a place for health care. In recent years, health care facilities have been built on cleaned-up sites in Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Oregon and California.

“These health care providers are getting good at it,” said Elizabeth Schilling, policy manager for Smart Growth America, an advocacy group. “They have internalized the idea that this is an opportunity for them.”

Because these sites are contaminated, many qualify for government tax credits and grants, providing health centers with vital seed money to build. Community health centers, by design, exist to serve populations in poor neighborhoods, where there also tend to be available but contaminated properties like old gas stations, repair shops and industrial sites.

In fact, many of the country’s 450,000 contaminated sites, known as brownfields, are in poor neighborhoods, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. These tracts are disproportionately concentrated in poor communities because contaminated sites are more difficult to redevelop if property values are depressed. Banks are often reluctant to finance construction on a property that might require a costly cleanup.

Brownfields projects can qualify for redevelopment grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development plus tied-in HUD loans and state grants. Florida in particular has promoted the construction of health centers on brownfields with tax credits of up to $500,000.

“The concept in Florida has proven to be not only needed, but viable,” said Michael R. Goldstein, an environmental lawyer in Florida who specializes in brownfield redevelopment. “We are just at the beginning of the journey here. I predict that in the next two years we’ll have close to two dozen across the state.”

How do you improve an impoverished, troubled community for the people who live there now and not the people who would move there if it were less impoverished, less troubled? (Coughgentrificationcough.) This is a question that governments ask almost as infrequently as developers. Grant-qualifying brownfields development projects can be anything from pricey restaurants and mixed-income condominiums to these health centers. If this health-center trend continues, especially in unlikely Florida, it might encourage other communities to redevelop around the needs of their actual residents.

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The 2012 Arctic report card: We’re going to need some summer school

by Myrna Posted on December 6, 2012

The 2012 Arctic report card: We’re going to need some summer school

By Philip Bump

Each year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration releases a “report card” for how the Arctic is doing. This year, the Arctic gets an incomplete and a notice to be signed by its parents stating that it will require tutoring.

Warning: sad polar bears.

The report focuses on two primary findings. First, that the year’s record ice loss comes despite a relatively unremarkable year, temperature-wise.

A major finding of the Report Card 2012 is that numerous record-setting melting events occurred, even though, with the exception of a few limited episodes, Arctic-wide it was an unremarkable year, relative to the previous decade, for a primary driver of melting — surface air temperatures. From October 2011 through August 2012, positive (warm) temperature anomalies were relatively small over the central Arctic compared to conditions in recent years (2003-2010). Yet, in spite of these moderate conditions, new records were set for sea ice extent, terrestrial snow extent, melting at the surface of the Greenland ice sheet, and permafrost temperature.

A reminder: Here’s how this year’s ice melt compared to the past.

Pettit Climate Graphs

Click to embiggen.

The unusually severe melt despite non-unusual temperatures is in part due to the feedback loop of melt itself.

A major source of this momentum is the fact that changes in the sea ice cover, snow cover, glaciers and Greenland ice sheet all conspire to reduce the overall surface reflectivity of the region in the summer, when the sun is ever-present. In other words, bright, white surfaces that reflect summer sunlight are being replaced by darker surfaces, e.g., ocean and land, which absorb sunlight. These conditions increase the capacity to store heat within the Arctic system, which enables more melting — a positive feedback.

The other main finding is that the melt of ice in the Arctic region is affecting the food chain.

A second key point in Report Card 2012 is that changes in the Arctic marine environment are affecting the foundation of the food web in both the terrestrial and marine ecosystems. …

For instance, new satellite remote sensing observations show the near ubiquity of ice-edge blooms throughout the Arctic and the importance of seasonal sea ice variability in regulating primary production. These results suggest that previous estimates of annual primary production in waters where these under-ice blooms develop may be about ten times too low. At a higher trophic level, seabird phenology, diet, physiology, foraging behavior and survival rates have changed in response to higher water temperatures, which affect prey species.

Changes in the terrestrial ecosystem are exemplified by vegetation and mammals. The tundra continues to become more green and in some locations above-ground plant biomass has increased by as much as 26% since 1982.

That change in surface vegetation has caused the lemming population to drop, which, in turn, has done the same to the Arctic fox, a species near extinction. At the same time, red foxes are migrating north, providing additional competition for shrinking food supplies.

So: That’s grim.

The report is loaded with graphs featuring lines that typically start at the upper left corner and then plummet down and to the right. It also contains interesting graphics like this one, showing the effect that an August storm had on ice breakup and melt near Alaska.

NASA

Click to embiggen.

It’s probably not really accurate to call this document a report card. It’s far more of a crystal ball, sort of an SAT gauging how the future might look. And it doesn’t look very good.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Will twentysomethings head for the suburbs?

by Myrna Posted on December 4, 2012

Will twentysomethings head for the suburbs?

By Susie Cagle

The millennial generation stands to shape our cities for decades to come, largely because it’s so big: 86 million, compared to 77 million baby boomers. Millennials are just starting to turn 30, and middle-aged demographers are wondering how many of them will run to the suburbs like their parents and grandparents before them.

s.yume

From USA Today:

Now, cities face a new demographic reality: The young and single are aging and having children. If the pattern of the past 50 years holds, they might soon set their sights on suburbia.

“We know young people move the most,” says Richard Florida, whose book The Rise of the Creative Class published 10 years ago helped spark the wooing of young professionals to revive declining urban centers. “So capturing people early on in their lives in a metro really matters. It’s important to compete with suburbs for people once they get a little older and have children.”

The older they get, the less likely people are to live in cities, according to recent Census data. The peak age for urban living is 25 to 27, when 20% of that age group are nestled in urban centers. By the age of 41, about a quarter have moved to the suburbs.

Experts say getting cities baby-ready would entail improving schools, building housing near public transit, and expanding and improving parks. That all sounds well and good to me, but here’s the hitch: Demographers say millennials want to bring the suburbs to the city with more low-rise townhouses and single-family homes instead of apartments. So much for that density thing?

Cities are growing, but it’s still unclear just how much they’re growing compared to the ‘burbs.

Will young people move to the ‘burbs because older people before them did, or will cities be able to retain young families?

There are still plenty of young and childless professionals for cities to pursue (the youngest Millennials are in their teens), but as the oldest move to another life stage, cities face a balancing act: Provide adult fun and culture and trendy lofts, but build family-friendly homes and child care centers at the same time.

Even with all the changes cities are making, many Millennials will head to the suburbs when they start a family — but probably not as many as in previous decades, [cities guru Richard] Florida says.

“Before, 90% to 95% would’ve moved, and I would see it more as 60% or 70% now,” he says, based on research and observations. “My hunch is many will move to a close-in suburb that’s walkable, near transit.”

My hunch, as one of these mysterious, potentially ‘burb-bound millennials? There are still lots of factors that would keep us in the cities: urban job growth, rising gas prices, the collapse of the housing market, safety improvements, declining interest in cars, delayed marriage age. These could all be good news for urban areas — even if some of us still secretly want a ranch house with a picket fence.

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