Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Plastics, plastics everywhere. WARNING: DO NOT TAKE THIS DIARY AS REASON TO GO WITH BOTTLED WATER. Writ large, tap is better than bottled. Bottled water has even more plastics. Having the opportunity to turn on the tap and have clean, drinkable water is core to a well-run, civilized society. “Drinkable”, regretfully, all too often means […]

[Read more →]

Looking at the reporting as to Volkswagon’s systemic fraud re diesel-engine pollution, there are some legitimate questions to ask: Will legal entities, around the world, take the legitimate approach of moving beyond “Corporate” to individual responsibility?  Will — sadly unlike the financial frauds of the 2000s — executives go to jail? To what extent do […]

[Read more →]

Yes, it’s true that China’s air pollution can be seen from space (NASA photo). attribution: NASA Earth Observatory NASA satellite observes intense air pollution and fog over eastern China on 7 December 2013. A new study funded by Greenpeace shows that a quarter of a million Chinese people died of air pollution from coal fired […]

[Read more →]

Environmental organizations are showing a too rare unity in their opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. In the U.S. Congress, the Republicans are fighting hard to get around reasonable review processes for safety, environmental impact, and understanding of the national interest to support a pipeline to move highly-polluting Canadian tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries […]

[Read more →]

President Barack Obama might finally have crystalized to a core message that, honestly, should have been core from the election through today. We cannot wait … – To address the health care inequities, costs, and shortfalls – To foster a more honest engagement between the financial community (Wall Street) and the citizenry (Main Street) – […]

[Read more →]

We know that the regulation leads to a safer society and that regulatory paths toward reducing pollution loads leads to a healthier society.  These are simply facts.   Those facts, however, can be difficult to translate from larger statistics to our personal lives.  A new research paper from Nicholas J. Sanders and Charles F. Stoecker provides something that […]

[Read more →]

For some (many?) Democratic voters and activists, one of their reasons to support Barack Obama (or John Edwards or Bill Richardson or …) in the Democratic Party primaries in 2007/2008 was a visceral fear of the RWSM (Right-Wing Sound Machine) and how it how it had built up (irrational) hatred of Hillary Clinton in a […]

[Read more →]

This morning, as roughly 160 dedicated and knowledgeable Americans put their freedom at risk to call attention to the horrific risks created by Tar Sands exploitation, President Obama announced a kowtowing to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and disinformation about the benefits created through sensible regulation with a postponement of Ozone regulations. Sadly, rather than […]

[Read more →]

Reminiscent a bit of Caroling Coal, my in-box this morning was deluged with Peabody Energy press releases (see full material after the fold) and other announcements of a new public relations campaign:  Coal Cares.  Evidently stung by the medical community’s highlighting of the linkages between the burning of coal (mainly for electricity) and health problems in […]

[Read more →]

This guest post from DWG provides a window on depressing developments in Florida highlighing the likely impacts of pending (soon to be signed) legislation. Nothing attracts tourists, increases property values, and improves quality of life like water choked with algae and clouds of aquatic midges hovering nearby. Fortunately, Governor Rick Scott and his Republican allies […]

[Read more →]