Category: Environment

This phrase from Chris Hedges piece, I blogged about it yesterday, keeps haunting me. I thought of it immediately when I read about those people in Tennessee whose house burned down because they didn’t pay the fee.

If the hegemony of the corporate state is not soon broken,

we will descend into a technologically enhanced age of barbarism.

I really have Real Fear for our kids. But I have hope as well. Not a lot, but… some.

UnderAge Records presents One Eyed Rhyno!

Great young band from Sacramento, CA, addressing the devastating and deadly conditions that impact wildlife after an oil spill.

The hat tip goes to Subhankar Banerjee from Youth Across North America Are Fighting for Their Future Climate.

 

In case you didn’t know, Solar, Wind, Geothermal Projects, are being “Fast Track” by the Obama Administration.

Fast Tracking attempts to minimize the red tape, in order to get the boots on the ground as soon as feasible.

They are OUR Public lands by the way.  We should use them to secure our Energy Future while protecting our wonderful Natural Heritage.

Here are the highlights:

BLM> California> California Desert District> Alternative Energy> Fast-Track Projects

Fast-Track Renewable Energy Projects

Solar

Ivanpah BrightSource Solar Project

The 400-megwatt project would incorporate seven 459-foot tall power towers and 214,000 heliostats (each holding two flat mirrors).

The project’s power plants would share an administrative complex/construction logistics area on approximately 4,073 acres of public land.

I was so delighted this morning to find this incredibly fascinating eKos diary over at GOS (by FishOutofWater)… what a welcome respite for me. I’ll probably be snooping around all day, looking for more info and background about the Kogi, located in northern Colombia in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

The Kogi are the last surviving civilization from the world of the Inca and Aztec, and their cities are untouched by our world. The mountain they inhabit is an isolated triangular pyramid rising over 18,000 feet from the sea, the highest coastal mountain on earth. It is on a separate tectonic plate from the Andes, and its unique structure means that it is virtually a miniature version of the planet, with all the world’s climates represented. The mountain is quite literally a micro-cosmos, a mirror of the planet on which every ecological zone is represented and in which most of the plants and animals of the planet can find homes.more

The diary is well sourced, full of links, and there’s quite a few video’s to see, I’m still watching. I figured I’d post about it here so y’all can try to catch up! It’s right up our alley, DharmaKids. lol. I’ll update with more thoughts or links as I go along. I’ve pretty much decided to devote my blog day to this.  Please add or embellish at will in comments.

When the priests, or Mamas, speak, they immediately reveal that their reference points are not of our world. They refer to the Spanish conquest as if it were a recent event. They talk openly of the force of creation, or Se, the spiritual core of all existence, and aluna, human thought, soul, and imagination. What is important, what has ultimate value, is not what is measured and seen but what exists in the many realms of meanings and connections that lie beneath the tangible realities of the world, linking all things. The nine-layered universe of their cosmology, the nine-tiered temple where they gather, the nine months a child spends in its mother’s womb are all expressions of creation, and each reflects and informs the other. A hill can also be a house, the mountains a model of the cosmos. The white hats worn by Arhuaco men also symbolize the snowfields of the sacred peaks. The hairs on a person’s body echo the forest trees that cover the mountain flanks. Every element of nature is imbued with higher significance, so that even the most modest of creatures can be seen as a teacher, and every feature of the world mirrors the whole. NG

And they have some warnings for the rest of us.

I couldn’t believe my ears.  Did Arnold just change from Red to Blue ?

Or maybe it was just a deeper shade of Green.

Schwarzenegger defends climate law, slams Texans

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer, SFGate — Sep 28, 2010

The governor’s vehement defense of the climate legislation commonly referred to as AB32 comes amid a fierce campaign led by oil interests to win passage in November of Proposition 23, a ballot measure that calls for suspending the climate law until the jobless rate hits 5.5 percent for a year, a level achieved only three times in 40 years.

Schwarzenegger, speaking before several hundred people at the Commonwealth Club in Santa Clara, said the proponents of Prop. 23 are attempting to subvert the democratic process using scare tactics. He likened the campaign to a shell game hiding what he said was the real purpose: “self-serving greed.”

“They are creating a shell argument that they are doing this to protect jobs,” the governor said. “Does anybody really believe they are doing this out of the goodness of their black oil hearts – spending millions and millions of dollars to save jobs?”

Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points”.

Talking Points: Taxpayer Tea Party   [the Bullet point version, pdf]

Americans for Prosperity — April 2009

— Stop the handouts to Wall Street.

— Stop the Federal Reserve’s printing press

— Stop the federal bailouts that pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

— Stop exploding the national debt, which will crush our children and grandchildren.

— The grassroots MUST take action in order to achieve these goals.

Federal Spending

The Obama Budget

Endless Government Bailouts

IRS History and Horror Stories

Who’s behind the baggers?

Americans for Prosperity Foundation — an organization that David Koch started, in 2004

Koch who?

And you thought the Teabaggers were being “run” by the Beckster …

On July 14th, Green Change announced the campaign for a Green New Deal, a 10-point program to create economic prosperity together with ecological sustainability.

Since then over 100 candidates for elected office at all levels have joined the Green New Deal Coalition.

The Green New Deal Coalition will cut military spending, create millions of green jobs, and revive the economy by protecting the planet we depend on.

Green Change is inviting all candidates, individuals and organizations that support a prosperous, sustainable future for America to endorse the Green New Deal.

Read the call for a Green New Deal and sign on today.

To date, 11 candidates for governor, 11 candidates for US Senate, and 33 candidates for US House of Representatives have joined the Green New Deal Coalition.

All agree on the need to cut military spending, fund green public works, ban corporate personhood, pass single-payer health care, restore progressive taxation, ban usury, enact a revenue-neutral carbon tax, legalize marijuana, institute tuition-free public higher education, change trade agreements to improve labor, environmental and safety standards, and pass sweeping electoral, campaign finance and anti-corruption reforms.

These candidates represent a clean break with the failed policies of the past that have led America down the road to economic and ecological disaster.

The Green New Deal promises a brighter tomorrow for America – one that combines the New Deal’s promise of freedom from economic hardship with decisive action to protect our planet.

You can help build the movement for real change by endorsing the Green New Deal today and asking candidates for elected office to join you.

  I met up with a good friend of mine this past weekend at a local dive bar. As the liquor loosened his tongue, he took a moment to complain about the wealthy elites he works for. Or as he put it, “those rich f*cks”.

 My friend works for a non-profit, environmental group. The major contributors, all of the board of directors, and most of his coworkers are all wealthy. His new boss wants to focus on gifts for donations, such as tote bags that you can bring to the grocery store, rather than specific environmental causes.

 This non-profit environmental group is a microcosm of what is wrong with the environmental movement today. Environmentalism is following down the same path to irrelevancy that labor unions traveled when they made the decision that 2% raises mattered and political movements didn’t.

You know how it is….. that moment…? You’re sitting at a stop light maybe, or just at a park, and the birds are chirping and squawking, dotting a the power line or blanketing the limbs of an oak tree. Then suddenly, they take flight. Almost as one. What was their cue?  And … how do they DO that … with no committee meetings, no caucus, no vote… ?

We’re not the only ones scratchin’ our heads… Saw this posted at commondreams (and elsewhere I think, but I dont see where)…

We Need Your Ideas: A Call for Direct Action in the Climate Movement

An open letter from the Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace USA, and 350.org:

What will it take to finally get serious about climate change?

by Bill McKibben, Phil Radford, & Becky Tarbotton

… Time is not on our side, so we’ve concluded that going forward mass direct action must play a bigger role in this movement, as it eventually did in the suffrage movement, the civil-rights movement, and the fight against corporate globalization. Even now, environmentalists in places like the coalfields of Appalachia have been putting these tactics to good use, albeit in small ways. (In the spring of 2009, our three groups worked with others to pull off a large-scale action outside the congressional power plant in D.C. that resulted in a promise that it would cease to burn coal.) History suggests, in other words, that one way to effectively communicate both to the general public and to our leaders the urgency of the crisis is to put our bodies on the line.

Nobody can predict which one event will trigger social change. Paul Revere was not the only rider to warn of the British advance, and many people refused to move to the back of the bus before Rosa Parks. But we do know two things. First, that we must act with unity, and second, many minds working together are likely to be smarter. So we’re asking for your help. As you go about your other work on behalf of the planet and its diverse communities, think about the possibilities for direct action, and write them down and send them to us.

snip

Note too that though this letter comes from just three environmental groups, we want this fight open to everyone. We’ll happily work with any organization that shares our goals and tactics as plans go forward; in fact, we think that breaking down boundaries between groups is key to any chance at success. We’ll do our best to reach out, but please make sure you let us know you want to be involved.

We’ve set up a special email address for ideas: [email protected]

By late autumn, we hope we’ll have been able to mine those ideas and start coming up with coherent plans for actions starting next spring.

After losing the race to represent the Democrats in a special US Senate election, former Democratic politician (and arguably, institution as far as West Virginia is concerned) Ken Hechler has endorsed Jesse Johnson.  Johnson is the nominee for US Senate of the Mountain Party, West Virginia’s affiliate of the Green Party.

Salon describes Hechler and his motivation for, at 95, running for Senate:

In his 95 years, Ken Hechler has recorded history from the front lines in World War II, debriefed Hitler’s top commanders before the Nuremberg Trials, advised Harry Truman, marched with Martin Luther King, published several books, been the subject of a documentary, and — somewhere between all of this — served nine terms in Congress and four as West Virginia’s secretary of state…

    You say that you aren’t running anyone and that you want to use this race to raise awareness of mountaintop removal from strip mining. Why single out this issue?  

             I’m not really running for the Senate, I’m running to enable the people of West Virginia to register at the polls their opposition to this devastating practice, which hurts so many people in the valleys when they dump the rocks in the soil and all the things that they’re blasting out of the mountains into people’s front yards.

Hechler received about 17 percent of the vote in the primary.  Now Johnson is the only candidate in the race who opposes mountaintop removal, a situation he was also in when he ran for governor in 2008.

The following video was posted on the front page of Johnson’s website:

Even though many of us have Disaster Fatigue, for scores of hundreds of local Gulf Residents, this BP Crisis is very much their recurring daily Nightmare.

BP Oil Spill Compensation Fund Not Living Up to Promise

NewsInferno.com, News that matters! — Sep 10, 2010

In an interview with USA Today, Feinberg promised a better response times as his staff weeds through old claims. “I’ve inherited a huge number of claims that have never been processed that need to be processed, especially business claims,” he said. Such claims, he said, were placed on a “side track” by BP when it was handling the process.

According to USA Today, more than 46,000 people have filed claims since Feinberg took charge. By September 8, his staff had paid 10,252 claims for nearly $80 million. Most claims paid are small, with payouts of $5,000 or less, USA Today said.

So Ken Feinberg has inherited an extensive paper trail of bureaucratic procrastination;

While the Gulf Coast Residents, simply keep reaping the BP whirlwind …

There is a battle going on for the hearts and minds of Americans, regarding our Energy Future.

Given the well-funded nature of this Ad Campaign — we probably shouldn’t expect any changes in our “Energy Economics” Future, anytime soon.

The Breaking Point

from AmericanSolutions  188 Videos



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

“Stop the National Energy Tax.”

 — Paid for by American Solutions for Winning the Future.

Who or What is ASWF ???

Sounds harmless, enough …

First Rule of effective Public Relations Branding:

Do No Harm … and sound innocuous.

Gulf Coast Communities Investigate Oily Sea Mist

by Debbie Elliott, NPR — September 3, 2010

Orange Beach city hall has been inundated with calls from residents with complaints – foam that they think is dispersant, a gray-metallic slick in back bays or seaweed that looks oiled. There’s a heightened sense of environmental awareness, and local officials are looking for a way to determine what’s going on.

Mayor Tony Kennon says that’s why the town hired independent scientists to test the air, water and soil.

[…]

Orange Beach is using grant money from BP for the testing, and posting the data on the town’s website. Mayor Kennon says negative results could affect tourism in the short term, but finding the truth is more important.

Kudos to Mayor Kennon for taking a stand, for what’s right!

The Major is a man of his word.

Monitoring, he is.