Environment

By Dan DeWalt

Entergy Nuclear of Louisiana, which operates the Vermont Yankee (VY) nuclear reactor in Vernon Vermont has launched an attack on the state of Vermont with the help of the federal courts.

Vermont state law gives the state the power to decide whether to allow further operation of the reactor past March 21, 2012 (the expiration date for VY). When Entergy bought VY, they agreed to this law and swore that they would not try to abrogate it. This was an outright lie on Entergy's part, and they sued the state as soon as it was decided that further operation of this crumbling, leaking and led-by-liars reactor would NOT be in the interests of the state and they were not given permission to continue operation past March 21.

By Douglas A. Berg

Nancy Goodman Brinker, a pioneer of “cause marketing”, founded Susan G. Komen For the Cure in 1982, reportedly as the fulfillment of a deathbed promise made to her sister, a victim of breast cancer. In 1994, Brinker founded In Your Corner, Inc., a for-profit company that markets health products and information. In 1998, Brinker sold In Your Corner to AstraZeneca, the third largest pesticide manufacturer in the world, primarily through Syngenta, a giant global agribusiness company it owns jointly with Novartis.

biologicaldiversity.org

SAN FRANCISCO— A coalition of conservation and American Indian groups today sued the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to protect thousands of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions from U.S. Navy warfare training exercises along the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington.

By Dave Lindorff

On my Yahoo home page today, there was a picture of the globe, and an instant poll asking me to check one of two choices: Yes or No, Do you believe global warming is a real threat?

I don’t usually waste my time on these things, but there was that tantalizing link to “See the results,” and you had to vote to see them, so I voted.

By Suzy T. Kane, The Taos News (NM), 1/19/12

Lila Garrett is the radio talk show host of “Connect the Dots” on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. When she saw a map of the U.S. military’s plan to join an area of southern Colorado to northern New Mexico for a total of 60,160,000 acres of land or 94,000 square miles, as Not One More Acre (www.not1moreacre.net) has calculated them, Garrett cried, “My God, this is the Pentagon’s 51^st state!”

Politico tweeted: "The Obama administration, via State Dept, will formally reject the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline today, multiple sources say."

A new book suggests that "It's the economy, stupid," may be more than political strategy; it may also be the key to environmental sustainability. The book is "Green Washed: Why We Can't Buy Our Way to a Green Planet," by Kendra Pierre-Louis. The argument developed is not just that the consumer choices of an individual won't save the planet without collective action, but also that the only collective action that will save us is abandoning the whole idea of consumer choices.

By Dave Lindorff

It’s fascinating to watch the long knives coming out for Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, now that according to some mainstream polls he has become the front-running candidate in the Jan. 3 GOP caucus race in Iowa, and perhaps also in the first primary campaign in New Hampshire.

(Reuters) - ConocoPhillips on Monday won a key permit that will allow construction of an oil field that is expected to provide the first-ever production from the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the western North Slope.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it granted a modified wetlands-fill permit that will allow ConocoPhillips to build a road, bridge and above-ground pipeline connecting its CD-5 project with the Alpine oil field on state land just east of the petroleum reserve.

The wetlands-fill permit -- initially denied to ConocoPhillips nearly two years ago -- is the last major government authorization that ConocoPhillips needs to build CD-5, said Natalie Lowman, a company spokeswoman in Alaska.

By Michael Collins

We don’t have a substantial cushion between today's climate and dangerous warming. James E. Hanson

The head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James E. Hansen, announced the results of break through global warming research last week. The earth's temperature is rising at a much quicker pace than previously anticipated according to research by the nation's preeminent climate scientist. We have little time to reverse the trend. (Image)

An example of the dangerous pace of change is emerging on Russia's Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf. Long-frozen permafrost is beginning to melt due to global warming. This threat was identified years ago due to the potential for highly toxic releases of heat-trapping methane gas.  Recent changes are both a surprise and a cause for alarm. There is more methane gas released from the Russian cauldron "than the CH4 emissions estimate for the entire world ocean." Methane is a "far more potent GHG [greenhouse gas] than CO2" with a greater potential to cause "abrupt climate change."

By Dave Lindorff

By Dave Lindorff

Wanted: Sculptor who works in bronze to construct life-sized group of statues of President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, all to be mounted at the high tide line below a high cliff in Maine’s Acadia National Park.

There what’s left of American posterity can watch as the seas rise inexorably over the coming years and decades, first lapping at the feet of the statues, then the knees, then the waists, then the chests and finally cover over the heads of these “leaders” in Washington who have cynically and foolishly squandered the last opportunity to take effective action to combat climate change. 

As the Occupy Wall Street movement pushes forward, evolving daily in mission and meaning, its cinematic companion has arrived on the scene. Heist: Who Stole The American Dream? is the latest socially and politically relevant documentary executive produced by Earl Katz, President of Public Interest Pictures. Heist will soon premiere as the fundamental primer on the historical and present-day inequities which gave rise to the Occupy Movement. From its 1930s depiction of Depression Era breadlines to Wisconsin Governor Walker's current assault on Collective Bargaining, Heist tells the story of America in decline due to the excessive greed of corporate executives and politicians bent on destroying the middle class.

 Hazardous Hydrofracking in America - by Stephen Lendman

Hydraulic fracking involves using pressurized fluids to fracture rock layers to release oil, gas, coal seam gas, or other substances.

Earthworks says the process provides easier access to deposits and lets oil or gas "travel more easily from the rock pores," where it's trapped, "to the production well."

By Harvey Wasserman

The global upheaval that is the Occupy Movement is hopefully in the process of changing---and saving---the world. 

Through the astonishing power of creative non-violence, it has the magic and moxie to defeat the failing forces of corporate greed. 

A long-term agenda seems to be emerging: social justice, racial and gender equality, ecological survival, true democracy, an end to war, and so much more. "When the power of love overcomes the love of power," said Jimi Hendrix, "the world will know peace." 

Urgent Call to Action: 

Go to Zuccotti Park Now!!!

By Charles M. Young

Mayor Bloomberg has announced that Occupy Wall Street must leave Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, October 14, allegedly so the city can clean it.

Almost verbatim notices have been served on other occupations around the United States and the world. Invariably, they have turned out to be a ploy to clear the space and not let demonstrators back in. Mayor Bloomberg has a long history of lying and police state tactics of crowd control.

By Dave Lindorff

While this statement by Occupy Wall Street is a powerful list of grievances against capitalism, it fails to even once mention the word "war." This is a significant failing, and cannot have been an oversight. The activists in Liberty Park and in cities across the country, if they want to make this a mass movement to confront the corporate domination of American politics and society, must be willing to confront head on the reality that the corporate elite have made the U.S. into the world's greatest war-monger. It is not just "colonialism," an outmoded term, that is the problem. It is a vast web of imperialism, imposed by a war machine that is bigger and costlier than all the rest of the world's armies combined, and it is the single biggest reason that this country is descending into a state of social and economic decay and decline.

By Charles M. Young

1) I had brunch on Sunday in Chinatown with a friend who works in local television news. He complained that the Occupy Wall Street people had sent over video that they said showed demonstrators getting maced. It didn’t show any such thing, my friend insisted. After brunch I walked over to occupied Zuccotti Park (two blocks north of Wall Street) and told somebody at the Media table that they had to be careful about claiming more for their video than it actually showed. Then I went home and looked at the video, and it clearly showed several young women, who presented no physical threat, getting wrapped up by police in a plastic net and pepper sprayed in the face.

MIC50.org

MIC at 50 – Charlottesville, VA,   September 16-18, 2011

Coleman Smith and Clare Hanrahan of New South Network of War Resisters

Militarism is killing us. It is waging a war on the Earth and the devastation wrought is far beyond what can be presented here. We are not academics; we’re activists and organizers who care deeply about our homeland in the Southern US, the region where we live and work, and the most militarized region in the country. We have limited most of our report to the Southeast US and a special place we refer to as Atomic Appalachia. Like Middle Earth in a Tolkien story, Atomic Appalachia is a little known part of our region squeezed in between the Central and Southern Appalachians. It is a region where the impact of militarism is especially evident.

(Thanks to activists Laura Leigh and Marilyn Wargo)

By Charles M. Young

http://nukefree.org/editorsblog/can-we-stop-next-fukushima-times-10-000

From Grist

The following text appeared in a handwritten letter from Tim DeChristopher addressed to Grist’s Jennifer Prediger.