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CALIFORNIA BACK IN BIG OIL’S CROSSHAIRS AS FEDS QUIETLY OK OFFSHORE FRACKING...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams VIA TRUTHDIG Wikimedia Commons Two federal agencies on Friday quietly finalized two reports, set for release next week, that found offshore fracking in California poses no “significant” risk to the environment—paving the way for oil and gas companies to resume the controversial extraction method in the Santa Barbara Channel and imperiling the region’s wildlife in the process, opponents said. The announcement Friday from the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (OEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement puts an end to a court-ordered ban on offshore fracking in federal waters off the coast of California. The moratorium was put into place in January as part of a settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which challenged the Obama administration’s ‘rubber-stamping’ of offshore drilling...

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FUSION ENERGY...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] From the Experts David Parker/SPL FUTURISM In Brief Nuclear fusion is the long sought “holy grail” of energy research. It could supply a nearly limitless source of energy—energy that is both clean and safe. Here’s where we are and where we have to go. Nuclear fusion is not a pipe dream. It’s a proven process that occurs naturally everyday in nature (just look up at the sky during the day, you’ll see a fusion reactor right there in the form of the Sun). It could mean an almost limitless supply of clean energy, and we’re nearly there. Fusion power is the reaction by which nucleosynthesis transmutes (changes) atomic nuclei, normally hydrogen atoms, by smashing them together to form a new nucleus, which releases energy. This is made possible in fusing stars thanks to...

‘The Nones’ — Growing Number of Americans Who Identify as Spiritual Yet Aren’t Part of Organized Religion...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Belief “American Christianity … has largely forgotten how to seek out and visit the ad hoc places of prayer in our culture.” By Carlos Wilton / Religion Dispatches Photo Credit: Wikipedia You can read about them in a steady stream of reports heralding the demise of 21st-century American Christianity: the growing population of “Nones” who are no longer filling church pews. The label, of course, comes from that dangling multiple-choice item on questionnaires asking about religious affiliation: “None of the above.” “The Nones” is an unfortunate term, easily confused with “the nuns.” You can’t use it in conversation without spelling it out. But Nones not nuns: vows are not their specialty. Who are they? Although the unaffiliated are a varied bunch, sociologists reassure us that a great many of them self-identify as “spiritual.” The...

FACT-CHECKING DONALD TRUMP’S LOW-OCTANE ENERGY POLICY...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Environment We take a look at the emissions and omissions from the GOP nominee-apparent’s ‘America First’ energy address. By Emily Schwartz Greco BILL MOYERS & COMPANY] Donald Trump doesn’t plan on reducing US fossil fuel use, despite phenomena like the storm surge that Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and parts of NYC’s five boroughs experienced during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images) Time was, picturing what Donald Trump’s presidential energy policies might look like required parsing his fact-defying tweets, forehead slap-worthy comments and threats to seize Middle Eastern oil by force. Now that the presumptive Republican nominee has unveiled his “America First” energy policy, there’s less guesswork to do. “We’re going to have all sorts of energy,” Trump declared when he parachuted into Bismarck, North Dakota, on Thursday to deliver his keynote speech at...

THE NUMBER ONE THING WE CAN DO TO PROTECT EARTH’S OCEANS...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Environment Strict agreements and governance over our bodies of water is the only way to conserve them for years to come. By Liza Gross BILL MOYERS & CO. Scientists know how to cure many of the ills plaguing ocean waters farther than 200 nautical miles from shore, beyond the jurisdiction of nations. Restricting fishing, shipping and deep seabed mining in biodiversity hot spots would go a long way toward restoring ocean health, they say. (Photo by Stephen Coates/AFP/Getty Images) This post originally appeared at Ensia.com. When New England fishers complained of working harder and harder to catch fewer and fewer fish, Spencer Baird assembled a scientific team to investigate. Though a fishery failure would once have seemed inconceivable, Baird wrote in his report, “an alarming decrease of the shore fisheries has been thoroughly...

RESILIENCE + RESISTANCE: A RECIPE FOR JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABILITY...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] By Chuck Collins, Sarah Byrnes POST CARBON INSTITUTE This morning in Boston, seven people sat down in front of construction equipment, blocking construction of a fracked gas pipeline coming into the heart of the city. This evening, the Jamaica Plain Time Exchange hosted a spring seed and plant exchange. What do these two things have in common? In the face of climate change, we have the dual challenge of both resisting new fossil fuel infrastructure projects and building a resilient, sustainable and equitable economy in the shell of the old. Both resistance and resilience-building are necessary. Resistance requires a bold assertion of community rights and individual voices to interrupt, block, and prevent encroachment by a politically powerful fossil fuel industry. Resilience requires creativity, resourcefulness and reskilling – along with focus on the long...

THE BOILING POT

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Richard Heinberg POST CARBON INSTITUTE On the surface, things appear normal. The status quo of life in America circa 2016 isn’t to everyone’s liking, but at least the system is still working after a fashion. The price of oil is going up a bit: that means the cost of driving is also creeping higher, but steeper prices provide a little welcome relief for an oil industry otherwise teetering on the brink of financial ruin. There are tiresomely long lines at airports, but that means people have the wherewithal to pay for plane tickets. Most people are disgusted with the presumptive U.S. presidential candidates, but at least the machine of electoral politics is still marginally functioning. The stock market is up, unemployment is down. We’re muddling through. Or are we? Beneath the lid,...

GOLD MINING HAS DEVASTATED THE PERUVIAN AMAZON...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] by Alejandro Davila Fragoso THINK PROGRESS CREDIT: Aerial view taken from a police helicopter shows a jungle devastated by gold mining in an area known as La Pampa in Peru’s Madre de Dios region. Illegal wildcat mining has been ravaging pristine jungle and contaminating it with tons of mercury. When Meraldo Umiña moved to the Madre De Dios region of Peru in 1983, the toxic gold rush that’s destroyed swaths of Amazon rainforest there was in its infancy. There were no laws regulating informal or illegal mining, and artisanal miners like him were few. “Gold was cheap,” Umiña, 59, told ThinkProgress in Spanish — “a gram was about $12.” Using simple but still harmful chemical methods, miners worked just by the rivers then, and the gold was easy to get, he said....

COMMENTARY: UPDATE OF TOXIC SUBSTANCES CONTROL ACT A WORTHY STEP THAT’S LONG OVERDUE...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] J. Scott Applewhite/AP In a groundbreaking report six years ago, a National Cancer Institute panel warned that it was time to pay closer attention to environmental causes of a disease that takes more than a half-million American lives each year. “[T]he true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated,” the panelists wrote in their transmittal letter to President Obama in April 2010. “With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread.” The report’s authors said the federal law aimed at controlling such hazards, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, “may be the most egregious example of ineffective regulation of environmental...

THE COSTLY TRUTH OF EMERGENCY SPENDING IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Eight years ago, when America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still raging at full force, the Pentagon’s annual budget for those conflicts amounted to $1 million for each troop who was actually fighting. But today, even as the Obama Administration continues to wind those wars down, the newest proposed Pentagon war-fighting budget would spend $5.9 million per deployed troop, a reflection, critics say, of sleight of hand that puts unrelated spending into a budget that’s supposed to be only for waging war. The figures come from a new report by the Stimson Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank based in Washington D.C. The report highlights the amount of spending in the special war-fighting account that authors argue should instead be part of the basic year-to-year budgeting for the Defense Department. The Obama administration has...

MAJOR CELL PHONE RADIATION STUDY REIGNITED THE CANCER DEBATE...

May 31, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] “It actually has me concerned, and I’m an expert”: Major cell phone radiation study reignites cancer debate New research from the National Toxicology Program links radio-frequency radiation to tumor formation in rats Dina Fine Maron, Scientific American “It actually has me concerned, and I’m an expert”: Major cell phone radiation study reignites cancer debate This article was originally published by Scientific American. Scientific American Federal scientists released partial findings Friday from a $25-million animal study that tested the possibility of links between cancer and chronic exposure to the type of radiation emitted from cell phones and wireless devices. The findings, which chronicle an unprecedented number of rodents subjected to a lifetime of electromagnetic radiation starting in utero, present some of the strongest evidence to date that such exposure is associated with the formation...

RATTLED BY TRUMP, G-7 NATIONS EAGER TO MOVE UP TIMELINE FOR PARIS CLIMATE DEAL...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] REUTERS/Jim Watson/Pool By Clayton Aldern GRIST This week, leaders of the world’s wealthiest developed countries and the E.U., the G7, met in Japan, where they agreed to expedite the Paris climate agreement so it enters into force by the end of the year. Also on the discussion table: Donald Trump. He was difficult to avoid, after all. On Thursday, the professional Twitter user delivered a lengthy speech on energy policy, in which he doubled down on his commitment to “cancel the Paris climate agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.” Seventeen countries have currently ratified the Paris agreement. To enter into effect, it needs ratification by 55 countries representing 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. None of the G7 members have yet ratified or otherwise acceded the agreement (though they have signed it, and China and...

EMAILS SHOW ‘COLLUSION’ BETWEEN BIG BANKS AND OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ON THE TRANS-PACIFIC TRADE PACT...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams “Denying our industry the same rights as enjoyed by every other sector would be terribly unfortunate,” one of the email reads. (SumOfUs / flickr / cc) This piece first appeared at Common Dreams. A series of emails released Friday show what activists describe as “collusion” between U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Wall Street executives to push for the passage the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The emails (pdf), obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the group Rootstrikers, which organizes against money in politics, include a message to Froman from a managing director at Goldman Sachs urging him to push for “robust commitments” on Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions—which allow private corporations to sue governments for perceived loss of profits—to be included...

The Defense Department Is Ruining America: Big Budgets, Militarization and the Real Story Behind Our Asia Pivot...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] “Our defense contractors await your business.” That was the message behind Obama and Carter’s visits to Asia. By Patrick Smith / Salon VIA ALTERNET Photo Credit: By Monica King/US Department of Defense [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons You have to tip the cap to Defense Secretary Carter. People in Washington spin things as a matter of course, as Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s deputy national security advisor, just explained in that New York Times profile considered in this space a few weeks ago. The spin is the thing. But never mind all that. Ashton Carter spins aircraft carriers, and right before your eyes. There he was last month, a few weeks before Obama’s current swing through Asia, on the flight deck of the John C. Stennis as it passed through a narrow strait in...

5 Superfoods You’re Probably Not Eating...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] It’s time to move beyond kale and quinoa. By Reynard Loki / AlterNet By some estimates, the state of American health looks pretty grim. And much of it is directly tied to poor diets. Based on current trends, one in three American adults—about 146 million people—will be suffering from type 2 diabetes by 2050, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That year, say researchers at Harvard University, 42 percent of Americans will be obese, up from the current figure of 35 percent. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that in 2000, partially because of a surge in meat consumption, the average American ate almost 20 percent more calories than he did in 1983. The problem isn’t only that we’re eating too much, but that we’re eating a lot...

HEATING UP THE FIGHT TO GET ACCURATE CLIMATE CHANGE INFO IN TEXTBOOKS...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] TAKE PART A resolution passed in Portland, Oregon, might be the tipping point K–12 schools need. (Photo: Ariel Skelley/Getty Images) Culture and education editor Liz Dwyer has written about race, parenting, and social justice for several national publications. She was previously education editor at Good. Textbooks that cast doubt on whether climate change is real could soon be a thing of the past in the nation’s K–12 classrooms. That’s the hope of environmental activists in the United States, including Bill Bigelow, a Portland, Oregon–based former social studies teacher who is the curriculum editor at the nonprofit Rethinking Schools. Bigelow helped spearhead last week’s passage of a groundbreaking climate justice resolution by the Board of Education for the Portland Public Schools. According to the resolution, all schools in the district will “abandon any...

WE ARE LIVING PROOF THAT VACCINES DO CAUSE AUTISM – VIDEO...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] “We are living proof that vaccines do cause Autism,” says Polly Tommey during the Q&A after the screening of Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe on Friday night. She is featured in the documentary and gives the audience a pep talk – and all of us watching this video as well – that we must not give up our fight to share the truth with parents so that more children will be saved from the ravages of vaccine injury. — with Polly Tommey, Del Bigtree and Andrew Wakefield. http://www.stopmandatoryvaccination.com http://vaxxedthemovie.comPublished on Apr 20,...

GIANT LEAK OF OFFSHORE FINANCIAL RECORDS EXPOSES GLOBAL ARRAY OF CRIME AND CORRUPTION...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Millions of documents show heads of state, criminals and celebrities using secret hideaways in tax havens By The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In this story Files reveal the offshore holdings of 140 politicians and public officials from around the world Current and former world leaders in the data include the prime minister of Iceland, the president of Ukraine, and the king of Saudi Arabia More than 214,000 offshore entities appear in the leak, connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories Major banks have driven the creation of hard-to-trace companies in offshore havens A massive leak of documents exposes the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and reveals how associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow...

ALONG THE SILK ROAD, A CITY BUILT ON SAND IS A MONUMENT TO CHINA’S PROBLEMS...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] By Simon Denyer THE WASHINGTON POST In Lanzhou New Area, recently completed apartment buildings await residents. (Gilles Sabrié/For The Washington Post) LANZHOU NEW AREA, China —This city is supposed to be the “diamond” on China’s Silk Road Economic Belt — a new metropolis carved out of the mountains in the country’s arid northwest. But it is shaping up to be fool’s gold, a ghost city in the making. Lanzhou New Area, in Gansu province, embodies China’s twin dreams of catapulting its poorer western regions into the economic mainstream through an orgy of infrastructure spending and cementing its place at the heart of Asia through a revival of the ancient Silk Road. Hundreds of hills on the dry, sandy Loess Plateau were flattened by bulldozers to create the 315-square-mile city. But today, cranes stand...

HEAR THIS WELL – CALL TO ACTION ON VACCINES AND AUTISM...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

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THE BATTLE OVER PUBLIC DRINKING WATER HAS JUST BEGUN...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] by Samantha PageCLIMATE PROGRESS CREDIT: AP Photo/Don Ryan An initiative to block Nestle from bottling water in Cascade Locks, Oregon, shown here, passed with 70 percent of the vote this month. It’s easy to hate Nestle’s bottled water business. The multinational behemoth recently fought a case at the Maine Supreme Court to continue filling Poland Spring bottles — at the same rate the locals pay for tap water. Environmental groups and locals had challenged whether the water company had the authority to sign a 25-year, 603,000 gallon/day contract for public water. The groups lost. Then the company announced it would build a bottled water facility in Phoenix, of all places, which prompted local outcry and a change.org petition to get Nestle out of the desert city, which pipes nearly all its water...

WHAT JUST HAPPENED IN AUSTRIA SHOULD BE A WAKE-UP CALL FOR AMERICAN VOTERS...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] A far-right candidate almost took power in Austria; The U.S. is in danger of letting one actually win Brogan Morris SALON.COM Alexander Van der Bellen, Norbert Hofer (Credit: AP/Ronald Zak) Until recently, he was a virtual political unknown. Now, following a surprisingly effective hard-right campaign for president, he’s one of the most popular politicians in the land. His pledges have included a vague commitment to protecting jobs, from trade agreements and foreigners, while Muslims, in particular, are according to him a hive threat to the nation and its way of life. Tighter border controls and deportations were promised. Divisive is the word: while he has enormous support from a disaffected hardcore, he’s also sparked protests. Some have even compared him to Hitler. His name is Norbert Hofer, and this week he almost...

11 of Liz Warren’s Best Trump Takedowns...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Election 2016 All hail Queen Liz. By Emily Shugerman / Revelist VIA ALTERNET Photo Credit: Tim Pierce, via Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at Revelist. In an election year that’s slated to produce the most unpopular candidates in history, there is one shining light—Senator Elizabeth Warren. The Massachusetts senator/women’s advocate/campaign finance reformer/human goddess has been dishing up truth bombs all year long. Utilizing social media with the skill of a millennial San Fransisco start-up owner, Warren slammed GOP candidates repeatedly for their asinine comments. Just this week, Warren delivered a speech at the Center for Popular Democracy’s annual gala, perfectly skewering Donald Trump. “Two weeks ago, he said that he was more than happy to dodge taxes because he doesn’t want to throw his money, quote, ‘down the drain,'” she said. “Nurses and teachers...

Hillary Clinton Reaches Out to Sanders Supporters and Expands Criticism of Trump...

May 30, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Hillary embraces more of Bernie’s ideas in California and makes a strong and provocative critique of Trump. By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet Photo Credit: www.youtube.com Hillary Clinton praised Bernie Sanders’ supporters and previewed aggressive attacks against Donald Trump at a Thursday rally in San Jose, Calif., just hours after the Associated Press announced Trump has the 1,237 delegate votes needed for the GOP nomination. “I am proud of the campaigns that Senator Sanders and I have run,” she said, speaking in a large exhibition hall at the Tech Museum of Innovation. “We have run a campaign on issues about the future. We both want universal healthcare coverage. We both want to make college affordable within the reach of every young person who wants to go to a public college or university. We both...

ARCHITECTURE ISN’T THE VILLAIN OF “HIGH-RISE” — WE ARE...

May 26, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Zach Mortice METROPOLIS MAGAZINE In High-Rise, the titular luxury residential tower is crowned by an elaborate roof garden, complete with a thatch-roofed cottage. ©StudioCanal For a different take on High-Rise, see our review of the film. In Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, the first film adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel, you get the entire litany of architecture-run-amok as it appears in virtually any cultural product. There’s the architect as mad visionary, capable of bringing astounding visions of the future into the present but unable to dictate their evolution once human imperfection intervenes. There’s the mania of stacking too many people too high into the sky. And there’s the reckless and ignorant call to knock it all down and build again, tabula rasa, when it all falls apart. All this is packaged in a set of aesthetics typical of...

WE NEED MORE BOREDOM IN OUR LIVES...

May 26, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Rhode Island School of Design’s president believes that if you’re not bored enough, you may be missing something. Rosanne Somerson METROPOLIS MAGAZINE Courtesy Guido van Nispen via Flickr When I used to teach graduate students in furniture design, I would assign them an abstract problem that required them to sit in the studio and draw through free association over a long period of time without getting up from their seats. After about 45 minutes, most students would start to squirm and get uncomfortable. If they hadn’t been in my class they would likely have stood up, checked their e-mail, gone online, or found other distractions. But I encouraged them to push through the discomfort because, after many years of running the same exercise, I had learned that right after the “squiggly” stage, something incredible...

REVIEW: NACTO’S TRANSIT STREET DESIGN GUIDE...

May 26, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] The Dirt Contributor Transit Street Design Guide / Island Press The new Transit Street Design Guide, the third in a series by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), is a must-have reference manual for city planners, transportation planners, engineers, urban designers, and landscape architects involved in the design of streets. These books, which include Urban Bikeway Design Guide and Urban Street Design Guide, formulate a new approach to the design of our public rights-of-way, not only as transportation corridors but as important spaces for city life. Street and highway design has been dominated by civil engineering technical manuals, namely American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)’s Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets — otherwise known as the “Green Book” — along with the Manual of Uniform Traffic...

HOW THE WATER CRISIS IN THE WEST RENEWED THE DEBATE ABOUT THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DAMS...

May 26, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] By Abrahm Lustgarten / ProPublica VIA TRUTHDIG Glen Canyon Dam is located in Page, Arizona. (Jacqueline Poggi / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) This piece originally ran on ProPublica. Wedged between Arizona and Utah, less than 20 miles up river from the Grand Canyon, a soaring concrete wall nearly the height of two football fields blocks the flow of the Colorado River. There, at Glen Canyon Dam, the river is turned back on itself, drowning more than 200 miles of plasma-red gorges and replacing the Colorado’s free-spirited rapids with an immense lake of flat, still water called Lake Powell, the nation’s second largest reserve. When Glen Canyon Dam was built — in the middle of the last century — giant dams were championed as a silver bullet promising to elevate the American...

PHYSICISTS THINK THEY MIGHT HAVE JUST DETECTED A FIFTH FORCE OF NATURE...

May 26, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] Hard Science In Brief Scientists have long known the four forces: Gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong forces between atoms. But could there be a fifth force still waiting to be discovered? New evidence suggests there is. Physics can be pretty intense at times, but one of the most straightforward aspects is that everything in the Universe is controlled by just four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear forces. But now physicists in Hungary think they might have found evidence of a mysterious fifth force of nature. And, if verified, it would mean we’d need to rethink our understanding of how the Universe actually works. Before we get into that, let’s go back to those four forces for a second, because they’re pretty important. They’re a fundamental part...

THE DESPERATE PLIGHT OF PETROSTATES...

May 26, 2016 Posted by Casey Coates Danson

[Translate] By Michael T. Klare / TomDispatch VIA TRUTHDIG Deepwater Horizon Response / CC BY-ND 2.0 This piece first appeared at TomDispatch. Read Tom Engelhardt’s introduction here. Pity the poor petro-states. Once so wealthy from oil sales that they could finance wars, mega-projects, and domestic social peace simultaneously, some of them are now beset by internal strife or are on the brink of collapse as oil prices remain at ruinously low levels. Unlike other countries, which largely finance their governments through taxation, petro-states rely on their oil and natural gas revenues. Russia, for example, obtains about 50% of government income that way; Nigeria, 60%; and Saudi Arabia, a whopping 90%. When oil was selling at $100 per barrel or above, as was the case until 2014, these countries could finance lavish government projects...