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Amid Peak Oil concerns (and spiking oil prices), ever-worsening news about our collective headlong rush toward catastrophic climate chaos, economic challenges, and … sometimes it can be hard to have optimism about America’s future (and, well, humanity’s …).  Despair, to the point of looking toward bunkers, is not an uncommon feeling for those most knowledgeable […]

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Mike Tidwell, impassioned director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, crossed a Rubicon. Faced with weather shocks knocking out electricity and Republican political ascendancy seeking to knock truth out of public discourse, Tidwell is “changing his life again.” As Mike put it in a Washington Post OPED today, I’m not a survivalist or an “end […]

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Globally, humanity faces many serious challenges that relate to resource challenges. Writ large there is a calculation: # of people * resource use per capita = demand on resources.  Very simply, that last (the “demand”) is overwhelming natural resources: we are overfishing, tropical forests are disappearing, top soil disappears in dust storms, acquifer water is […]

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As part of the general agenda to drag America into a nightmarish Mr Rogers’ neighborhood, the Republican House Majority is pushing through legislation that will savage the U.S. government’s ability to monitor risks to the public and inform decision-makers about how to move forward to address these threats. And, they are also savaging programs — […]

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For a huge share of Americans, Mr. Rodgers’ singing “won’t you be my neighbor” on their local public television station was a warm welcoming to becoming part of a larger community. Well, in the 21st century, associated with prospects for killing off funding for those public outlets and for creating havoc for years to come […]

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Yesterday, Mark Hertsgaard and friends went to confront cranky anti-science climate zombies on Capital Hill. Perhaps my favorite line of all is when the young woman asks Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Exxon) a perplexing question: I don’t understand why my generation has to suffer because you don’t like what you’re hearing. There are several striking items […]

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This guest post by Deborah Phelan brings food to the table — where it should be — for discussion. In ranking climate change last month as the highest risk facing the World in 2011, the WEF glitterati meeting at Davos also connected the proverbial dots between climate change and economic disparity (ranked 3), extreme weather […]

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With the introduced HR-1, the proposed continuing resolution for the remainder of the U.S. government’s Fiscal Year 2011, the House Republicans seek to defang (via defunding) program and program that work to protect Americans via monitoring and studying risks and threats that require response and to put the breaks on government investment in research and […]

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This guest from dsteffen is an enthralling read providing a substantive window on a story that includes deliberate scientific learning, industrial problem solving, industrial efforts to undermine science through aggressive promotion of falsehoods, and how government regulation provided payoffs many times even exaggerated definitions of the cost of implementation. It is a story that has […]

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As rumored prior to the release of President Obama’s proposed 2012 budget, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) program will take a serious hit, roughly a 50 percent cut. As David Dayen put it prior to the budget’s release, The Administration says this lowers LIHEAP assistance to where it was in 2008. But […]

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