Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben write:
Our lives are under threat from some of the most powerful and richest entities — Here's how we can fight back and win. …
[T]he full power of the fossil fuel industry—the most profitable business in the planet's history—has been brought to bear on the fight, and they play hard and dirty. The Koch Brothers spend huge sums to underwrite the network of global warming skeptics; the US Chamber of Commerce emerged as the biggest campaign funder of them all, shuttling 94% of its donations to climate deniers. This kind of clout carried the day: the biggest dream of DC Washington groups was the so-called 'cap-and-trade' bill, behind which they mustered every insider technique they'd spent the last four decades perfecting. But in the end they didn't come close: Harry Reid refused to even schedule a floor vote, knowing that he was far short of the votes needed to pass the bill. The White House stayed on the sidelines.
To us, the lesson is pretty clear. Since we're never going to have as much money as the fossil fuel industry, we need to rebuild the kind of mass movement that marked 1970: bodies, passion, and creativity are the currencies we can compete in. It's not impossible.
Working with next to no money, the fledgling campaign at 350.org managed over the last three years to coordinate 15,000 rallies in 189 countries--every nation on earth save North Korea. It's been active in every US state and Congressional district. And this week, it combined forces with another important American grass roots climate campaign, 1Sky, for extra reach.
1Sky was founded in the same spirit, and at the same time, as 350.org, and has worked to develop leaders around the country and help build a base of hundreds allies. Together, we'll be smarter, bolder, faster, and more creative than we were before.
This new and expanded 350.org will mobilize on a large scale—circle Sept. 24 on your calendar for a worldwide day of bike-based action. But it's also going aggressively after the backroom money, with a far-reaching new campaign that tackles the US Chamber of Commerce for its climate stance.
This youth-based campaign is linking up with labor, with faith communities, with frontline communities who have the most experience trying to shut down dirty power plants in their backyards. Most of all it's actually out in the streets, organizing new blood. The idea is not to supplant the Washington green groups, but instead to give the whole movement new clout--enough clout to withstand the crushing power of oil money. And enough energy to let us get off defense and back on the attack.
We don't know if we'll win in the end: the science of climate change grows darker by the day, and the window for effective action is swiftly closing. But any chance requires people power replacing corporate power. In the year of Tunisia and Egypt and Wisconsin, it's worth a try.
The Green Diary Rescue appears every Saturday afternoon. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it.
GrumpyOldGeek turned us on to a wonderful bird's eye view in Iowa Eagle Cam: American Bald Eagle Eggs Hatching Live - Two Eaglets So Far and inDecorah IA Eagle Cam: 3rd Egg Hatching Now.
But heed his warning. The video below can be addictive: "The female is larger than the male (in this case). The male is the one with the dark ring around his eyes. This pair of eagles has been together since 2007. They have successfully hatched and fledged eight eaglets in the previous three years. The nest is located about 80 feet up in a cottonwood tree located near Decorah, Iowa on private property near the Decorah Fish Hatchery operated by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources."
[Update: video embed moved below the fold due to audio autoplay issues —rs]
citizen k excoriated Environmentalists for Koch Industries: "Glen Hurowitz is providing a great example of how the"professional left" works hard to support Republicans like Joe Barton. Mr. Hurowitz who is a 'senior fellow' at the Center for International Policy wrote to me on Twitter: 'Dems can't win if nobody trusts them to stand up for clean air and water, jobs, values they ran on,' and the body of his work is a shabby and dishonest effort to paint Democrats in general and President Obama in particular as untrustworthy on exactly those issues."
FishOutofWater lamented how the GOP Is Set to Kill Green Jobs Boom & Economic Recovery that the Obama administration has effectively pushed: "Strict enforcement of the clean air act, including court mandated enforcement of standards that limit CO2 pollution, is the stick encouraging industry to develop electric cars and renewable energy. Economic stimulus funds were the carrot that has spurred green job growth across America. Michigan manufacturing, which was left for dead in the Bush years, is resurgent under President Obama's leadership. Tens of thousands of new jobs in wind, solar, advanced battery development, and green technology are coming on line in response to the stimulus and tax credits."
jamess spotlighted the analysis of Ed Markey: 'It has Not been Protesters who have brought down the Nuclear Industry, It's Wall Street': "Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), member of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee and ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, has been making some 'anti-establishment' waves with all his 'harsh rhetoric' against Nuclear Power, lately. Calling out what he calls 'their Risk Premium' which has to fall upon the"payer of last resort" -- the US. Tax Payers -- in order for them to attract 'capital investors.' Well it's about time!"
Mary Anne Hitt applauded Students Who Are Leading the Way In Moving Beyond Coal: "Nationwide young people are working to move their college campuses and communities beyond coal to clean energy solutions - and they are winning. In the past few weeks we’ve seen three colleges decide to move beyond coal on their campuses, showing yet again that students are helping to lead the fight for clean energy. Just this week we saw Miami University of Ohio announce it would immediately begin reducing the amount of coal burned on campus and eventually eliminate it altogether."
Iowa Farm Activist evaluated the Republican Strategy That Opposes Farm Bill Stimulus: "The core of our strategy should be to give the country a permanent economic stimulus that the government does not have to pay for. We had that in the past. The New Deal farm programs had no commodity subsidies, but instead used regulation to set a floor under prices and a ceiling over farm commodity prices. Price floors were set at 90% of parity, 90% of a fair trade, living wage price, when the Banking Committees got involved, with the Steagall Amendment of 1941. There was no cheap corn, (and no corn subsidies,) 1942-1952 when US agriculture achieved parity every single year. There was no export dumping of cheap corn on Mexico (botttom side of price)! There were reserve supplies to put on the market to address price spikes (top side of price). Farmers got price support loans, (and yes, that requires start up money for a revolving loan fund,) but then farmers paid interest TO the government, the farmers did not receive commodity subsidies FROM the government. (There were, of course, programs in other titles, like conservation.)"
Agriculture, Gardening & Food
NourishingthePlanet discussed how to cut back on women's workload in Reducing the Things They Carry: "In this week’s episode, research intern Kaia Clarke discusses how the average woman farmer in sub-Saharan Africa is responsible for not only growing food but also for collecting water and firewood–putting in a 16-hour workday. But all across the continent, many innovative projects are helping women gain access to resources and technologies that make their daily tasks more manageable, such as improved hoes, planters, and grinding mills; rainwater harvesting systems;and lightweight transport devises."
NourishingthePlanet also discussed another cutback in Improving Grains to Reduce Hunger.: "Eight hundred million people depend on sorghum and millet as their main food source. One way to help reduce hunger and poverty is to increase production of these high quality grains. That’s is the mission of the Sorghum, Millet and Other Grains Collaborative Research Support Program (INSTORMIL), which is one of nine United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-supported CRSP programs. Established in 1979, the International Sorghum and Millet Program was renamed—although it kept the well-known acronym—and moved to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2006."
The Anomaly delved into one of the elements raising the cost of what we eat in Betting on Hunger: Barclays makes £340m on Food Speculation: "By turning basic necessities like food into speculative assets, Barclays has been able to extract over $540 million from meal-seeking suckers the world over: 'Barclays could be making as much as £340 million a year in profit through gambling on the price of key commodity crops like coffee, sugar and wheat, the Ecologist has learnt. By creating funds to allow investors to speculate on the price of food, in the same way they would invest in the shares of a company, Barclays and others are able to bet on the price of food. However, food commodity trading is leading to higher and more volatile prices, say campaigners, which affect poor families in the less industrialised world the hardest as they can’t afford basic foods and also make it more difficult for farmers to plan and invest.'"
In Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol. 7.6, Ed in Montana filled in for Frankenoid: "Good morning everyone andwelcome to SMGB, Desert Wildflowers Edition. It’s Ed in Montana guest blogging for our esteemed hostess Ms. Frankenoid. It’s been a minor year for wildflower blooms down in the Mojave Desert. The heavy west coast storms of the last two months came too late or failed to reach over the coastal mountains to the eastern deserts to make much of a wildflower display. Which brings up several interesting questions; what factors help make a big Spring bloom of desert wildflowers, and how do you measure a bloom."
RuralRoute discussed something else that may raise food prices this year in The Fierce Reality of Rural: "Greetings from Rock County, Minnesota. I'm in the middle of lunch, where do you think the bun of my fish sandwich came from? A hint: probably more than a hundred miles from here. Most of the worlds grains are raised in a few great granaries, and the Great Plains are one of them. So what does what happens in the middle of Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas matter? Well, the Red River Valley is flooding, it's a late and prolonged flood, and it may leave close to a million acres too wet to plant with wheat and other grains this year. That's potentially a loss of a hundred million bushels or so of wheat and other crop production in a year when carryover inventories are already low."
In What's For Dinner? v.5.36 Meatless Wonders ninkasi23 wrote: "I am certainly no vegetarian but I don't need to eat meat for every meal so in my efforts I have found some wonderful and tasty recipes that I would like to share with you tonight!"
In her weekly Macca's Meatless Monday diary, beach babe in fl discussed Cuban food: "The area of Florida where I was raised has a heavy Cuban influence. It's an area that attracted Cuban immigrants from as early as the seventeen hundreds to the mass immigration that occurred following the Communist Cuban Revolution in the late 1950's. The immigrants who had been mainly from the Cuban upper middle class, worked rapidly to start businesses, restaurants and to become a part of their communities. What I enjoyed most about their proximity was the wonderful Cuban restaurants and how their cooking influenced the local cuisine. The ingredients were readily available so Cuban recipes became a part of the local mix of Southern, Jewish, Italian and Spanish cuisine. Today I will share some traditional Cuban recipes and some in which I've used some of the traditional ingredients but in a healthy, meatless example."
Climate Change
jamess spoke of how Artificial Trees could assist in the Carbon Capture and Storage of CO2:
You could almost see the happy smirk on
FishOutofWater's face in
Climate Skeptic Confirms Global Warming to Shocked Republicans in Congress: "The key witness in the Republican congressional committee's case against global warming shocked his hosts with preliminary evidence confirming that global warming is caused by human activities. Dr. Richard Muller, Professor of Physics at UC Berkeley, the most credible climate change skeptic the Republicans could find, showed that his random sampling methodology, designed to remove possible sampling biases, gave preliminary confirmation of the global temperature records developed by NOAA, and Dr. James Hansen of NASA, GISS. The British Hadley CRU dataset, repeatedly maligned by Republicans in the"climategate" incident, was also given preliminary confirmation by Dr. Muller."
rktect also had a take on that in Global Warming is real say the Koch Brothers: "The Climate Change Denier Scientist the Koch Brothers paid to debunk Global Warming has come out and acknowledged that science does indeed show that yes the climate is warming. …I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Can it really be that he testified to the congressional groups attempting to debunk climate change science as a hoax that indeed 'We see a global warming trend' !?!"
Main Street Insider dug between the lines in S02E09: Overturning EPA: " A couple weeks ago, we looked at new regulations on greenhouse gases (GHG's) being imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This week's episode focuses on a bill proposed as a response to these new regulations by House Republicans who oppose the EPA's efforts. Contrary to what the title of the bill would suggest, this proposal has absolutely nothing to do with taxes. In fact, aside from the title, the word 'tax' does not appear once in the text of the bill. The actual language of the bill shows that the real intent is to strip the EPA of power in the area of GHG's and leave any decision making to Congress."
donaldcohen dissected the right's assault on eco-regulations in Back to the Future: the Cost of Delay: "Republican Darrel Issa, Chairperson of the Government Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent letters to 170 industry associations asking for marching orders of which so-called "job-killing" regulations they wanted out of the way. Responses from a who's who of toxic emitters including the American Chemistry Council, the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, the American Gas Association, American Iron and Steel Institute and other utility industry lobbies targeted the Clean Air Act-mandated rules on power plants. Their rhetoric is familiar, formulaic -- and false. Every rule that asks industry to clean up after themselves or protect the public from the poisons they leave behind is branded a 'job killer.'"
MNDem999 saw the bad in Republicans' Stealth Attack — EPA, Budget: "GOP leaders in the House of Representatives put together and passed a funding bill for the remainder of the fiscal year that would devastate nearly every facet of EPA's work. The measure would reduce the EPA's budget by an astounding $3 billion, cutting it 29 percent from 2010. And while they were at it, the House included a provision to permanently suspend EPA's ability to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions that result in climate change."
blue aardvark reported on the House denying the reality of global warming: "The House rejected a Democratic amendment Wednesday that would have put the chamber on record backing the widely held scientific view that global warming is occurring and humans are a major cause."
Writing for the The Media Consortium, Sarah Laskow pointed out that The EPA Can Regulate Carbon, For Now: "This week, the House voted to shut down the carbon regulation program at the Environmental Protection Agency, but the Senate rejected four different measures that would have stopped or delayed EPA action. The EPA, as mandated by the Supreme Court, has been moving forward with regulations that would require carbon polluters to apply for EPA permits and to use the best available method to start limiting carbon emissions."
Mary Anne Hitt discussed means of Stopping Congressional Attacks on the Clean Air Act: "Today's House vote is expected to go the big polluters' way. Republicans (and some Democrats) are putting American lives at risk by handcuffing the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) authority under the Clean Air Act to enact air pollution protections. Not only is the House expected to vote for this appalling bill proposed by Michigan Representative Fred Upton, but they are also expected to actually reject amendments that would suspend the draconian legislation if it was found to threaten national security or public health."
rperks looked at the political response to one key Congressman's anti-environmental actions in Song for Fred Upton: Dirty Air Act Ditty: "Recently, over congressional recess, Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) got hammered at home for his legislation aimed at blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from updating and enforcing clean air safeguards. His constituents turned out in droves to several public meetings to air their concerns about his 'bad air' bill -- and rightly so. Greenpeace got in the act by slamming Upton with a hilarious TV ad spoofing his romance with dirty energy lobbyists."
But Heather TaylorMiesle NRDC Action Fund saw the good in Champs Stand Up and Fight for Clean Air As Tea Party Loses Steam: "Things are looking up in the effort to preserve clean air protections and to keep the Clean Air Act intact. For months, polluters and their allies in Congress have been trying to strip away the protections that keep our air safe to breathe. But in the past few days, 4 anti-clean air amendments have failed miserably in the Senate, 34 senators have declared their support for the Clean Air Act, and now some members of the GOP are indicating they might give some ground on the dirty policy riders they’ve attached to the spending bill — policy riders that don’t save a single red cent."
RandWThe Climate Satellite Shutdown: Blinding Science: " Amidst the calculated insanity of eminent Federal Government shutdown orchestrated by Republicans, there is another bit of calculated ignorance, which has successfully blinded scientists. The only satellite ever built by NASA but not launched is $100 million in climate data gathering sensor capabilities, sitting in a warehouse in Maryland -- for the last 10 years. Read this outstanding Popular Science article by the perservering Bill Donahue: Who Killed The Deep Space Climate Observatory?"
Green Communities & Sustainability
DWG looked at a project which Combine affordable housing with clean energy: "Low income families are always hit hardest by rising energy costs. Juggling the costs of food, housing, transportation, and electricity can mean the difference between poverty and misery. … Interfaith Housing Development Corporation in Chicago has designed a housing project to limit the impact of energy costs and help some low income families avoid misery. It also will help keep their carbon footprint as tiny as their electric bills."
In Village Green, Kaid at NRDC looked at aNew Retail Model that Promotes Equity: "Perhaps heralding a new trend toward what social observer Suzie Boss, writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, has called"retailing with heart,” a bakery and restaurant has begun offering its wares for whatever prices customers are willing to pay. And, yes, that includes nothing at all if that’s what they can afford. While the establishment indicates suggested values for its products and meals, it does not insist upon collecting on them."
Energy
DWG helped us Remember the victims of a reckless corporation: "This is the one-year anniversary of a massive explosion that ripped through the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, killing 29 miners and injuring 2 others. The explosion occurred at 3:27 PM as crews were beginning to exit the mine at the end of their shift. … They died working for Massey Energy, a company with a long history of safety violations. The company chose to contest rather than fix ventilation and dust citations at this mine before the explosion. Company officials further trivialized the disaster by writing it off as just an act of nature. If coal seams did not have high levels of methane and coal dust was not explosive, none of this would have happened."
jim in IA wrote a Layman's Guide: Fracking Technology: "Large amounts of water, sand, and chemicals are needed. The wastewaters from the drilling and fracturing process require proper disposal. Public concerns and potential risks of contamination of water supplies appear in many reports."
Christian Dem in NC wrote about how Transocean executives get bonuses: "[T]he filing says, 2010 saw an overall drop in the number and severity of incidents for the company. As a result, Transocean claims that it had the best overall safety performance in its 57-year history, meriting the bonuses. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!"
As did bkamr in Transocean CEO Gets Safety Bonus: "At this point, I thought I couldn't be shocked by the plutocrats and their sociopathic greed, but they got me, again, with this move. I'm in full stomach-roiling, stunned disbelief. How could anyone ever take such a bonus, let alone have a group of other people agree that they should receive them?"
And childeroland: Deep Water Horizon Owner Gives Corporate Bonuses For "Best Year in Safety": "Most people would find accepting a safety bonus under such conditions laughable, considering the consequences of the Deep Water Horizon disaster, but in the current corporate culture, even an action as beyond the pale as this is appropriate when an embarrassing accumulation of wealth is your management goal."
Me, too, in Eleven dead no obstacle to Transocean's annual 'safety' bonuses: "Remember Transocean? The largest off-shore drilling company in the world? The company BP contracted with to put a deep, deep hole in the Gulf of Mexico with its drilling rig, the half-billion-dollar Deepwater Horizon? The rig that exploded and killed 11 crew and injured 17 others a year ago this month? The hole that, consequent to the failure of a poorly designed blowout preventer and numerous mistakes in judgment by the drilling managers and crew, spewed millions of barrels of oil into the environment before it was ultimately capped? A spew that continues to affect the Gulf despite having long ago left the headlines? That Transocean?"
And then there was Transocean's response to the international firestorm of complaints:
texasmom wroteTransocean finds a heart (belatedly): "Tonight I am pleased to read this: Transocean’s senior management team said it would donate the safety bonuses awarded to it for 2010 to victims of the Macondo well explosion that killed 11 people – nine of them Transocean employees. Apparently, they received many critical comments, including those of Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar: 'In my own view, 2010 was probably the greatest year of pain in terms of oil and gas development in the deep water all across the world, especially in the Gulf of Mexico.” and a few thoughts of my own.'"
Christian Dem in NC did likewiseTransocean backtracks on calling 2010"best year ever": "Well, that didn't take long. On Friday, Transocean released its annual report, in which it proclaimed 2010 its best year ever for safety--even with the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Earlier today, Transocean admitted what should have been obvious--that statement didn't belong there."
timmyc has been following discussions of wind power on coastal Maryland and took not off Offshore Wind Testimony to MD House: "AREVA is one of the manufacturers of major offshore wind turbines. They blogged about their testimony to the MD House today. This is all part of the House discussion on the OffShore Wind Act."
Eclectablog had more words about Rep. Ray Franz, the idiot who wants to ban offshore wind power in Michigan: "Michigan Congressman Ray Franz is an idiot that wants to ban (BAN!) offshore wind energy in Michigan.While the rest of the world is diversifying their energy portfolio to include renewable energy sources, Michigan Congressman Ray Franz (an idiot) wants to take us backwards."
Larry Nocella wrote I'm Still a Proud Nuke Neighbor: "By living near a nuclear plant, I feel like I'm doing a little more than the average American toward putting an end to the Era of the Oil Wars. If you want to end dependence on foreign oil, then you need to accept energy production in the USA. As an aside, I'm hoping it can be solar. It will forever annoy me that the sun is bombarding our planet with radiation day and night and we haven't exploited that. The sun is a huge, free battery in the sky but we're still digging in the earth like worms."
In another installment of his Pique the Geek 20110403 series, Translator published How Nuclear Reactors Work. Part the Third: "This evening we shall examine nuclear technologies that are not yet used for commercial production. These designs are called Generation IV plants, and may either be prototypes or merely designs that have not yet even had a prototype built, but appear to be feasible to come on line commercially by 2030 or so, give or take. There is also a Generation V set of concepts, but they are much further out as far as construction of even a prototype in concerned, and we shall not consider them here."
Green Philosophy & Green Essays
Michael Brune answered the question Why Do Sea Turtles Need Solar Panels?: "People sometimes ask me why the Sierra Club is so focused on stopping dirty coal plants or fighting to get our country off of oil and onto clean, renewable energy sources. After all, you won't find pictures of wind turbines or solar panels in our Wilderness Calendar (at least not this year). Why not stick to protecting wild places and wild creatures — like sea turtles and sequoia trees? The answer is that we've never been more focused on saving wild places. But we can't succeed without also looking at the bigger picture. We must stop direct threats to habitat and species, whether it's from logging, mining, residential development, or other sources. But we must also address threats that might come from far away. And doing that almost always leads us back to energy -- whether it's the effect of climate disruption from burning fossil fuels or the increasingly harsh environmental consequences of extracting coal and oil."
vahana took a look at Japan's troubles with a poet at his side in Reading Basho in the Wake of Disaster: "One part of Basho's spring-time excursion took the 17th-century tourists through Fukushima to Sendai where they met an artist named Kaemon, who guided them on an impromptu tour of famous local places. Basho writes, 'The bush clover grew thick at Miyagino; I could imagine the sight in autumn. It was the season when the pieris bloomed at Tamada, Yokono, and Tsutsuji-gaoka. We entered a pine grove where no sunlight penetrated—a place called Konoshita, according to Kaemon—and I thought it must have been the same kind of heavy moisture, dripping from those very trees long ago, that inspired the poem, "'Suggest to your lord, attendants, that he wear his hat." '"
In a new installment, ALifeLessFrightening explained part of recipe for Living Simply: "I planted several other types of loose-leaf green lettuce, both green and red Romaines, a red iceberg (I typically don't consider iceberg a real veggie, but this is an heirloom variety in a beautiful shade of deep maroon--there's got to be some nutrition there), romanesco, broccoli (Arcadia variety), and Chinese cabbage. Some are new varieties to me, some I have planted before. The butterheads tend to be my favorites, but I also love a lot of the tender loose-leaf varieties. Romaines tend to end up in my smoothies, though I love their crunch in salads as well."
Oceans, Wetlands & Water
Terra Mystica took on two heavy-duty controversies in one with the diary I/P Water — Sources, Issues, and Solutions?: "Water in Palestine, Israel, and the neighboring countries is critical. Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Jordan have the least renewable water resources in the region. Israel (including the West Bank and Gaza) and Jordan use more fresh water every year than can be recharged naturally. The area is in severe drought. … There is no play in the system. Water is truly a zero-sum issue. This is reflected in the politics of war and peace in the region. It leads to intransigence. Can there be room to negotiate peace when all parties are demanding more of a scarce and diminishing, yet
The Natural World & the Great Outdoors
arendt discussed Revolutionary Science: Hydrothermal Vents and the Origins of Life: "Within ten years of the completely unexpected, and heavily publicized, discovery of deep ocean hydrothermal vents, complete with exotic tube-worm lifeforms, a hypothesis that these vents were the location of the origins of life was proposed, in 1988. Over the intervening twenty-plus years, this hypothesis has been elaborated into a testable theory that includes geological, physical, chemical, and biological predictions, some of which have already been confirmed."
epjmcginley offered us a lovely look at what's going on around his neck of the country in It's the Water: "Now Spring has officially come to Western Washington, (it has I promise it is out there just beyond the clouds) we have stuck all the cuttings and counted their numbers, flagged them and fertilized and protected them from deer. In no time at all, or a few months at minimum, they will grow so large and dense that thinning their branches will be needed to ensure the irrigation water reaches their pot confined roots."
birdbrain64 introduced us to Passages in the Prairie: Wind Cave National Park and Jewel Cave National Monument: "There is a place at the edge of the prairie, just on the southern edge of the Black Hills of South Dakota, where the earth breathes - sometimes inhaling, sometimes exhaling with enough force to blow off your hat! And that's apparently what happened in 1881 when brothers Tom and Jesse Bingham noticed a small hole in the ground. The Lakota call it 'Sacred Breath' or 'Breath of Power.' In their creation story, it is where the People emerged from their subterranean world into this one. As with the entire Black Hills region, to the Lakota this is a very sacred place. It is to me, too."
Animals
lineatus was up for the Dawn Chorus: I got nothin': "After about a month and a half of crappy, rainy, cold weekends, we were suddenly blessed with ... spring. It's like a switch was thrown and all the sudden, the sun was shining, the flowers were blooming and the birds were chirping. Oh boy, were the birds chirping."
DWG gave us an Update on penguin rescue efforts from oil spill in south Atlantic: "'Unlike previous spills of this size, it didn't happen way out to sea and gradually approach such a vital conservation area. It struck right at the heart of the penguin colony and it's devastating to them.' ¬— Sarah Sanders, Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds."
Transportation
Lefty Coaster wrote that he had discovered The other reason Republicans oppose public transit: To Preserve Segregation: "The Republican Party's cozy relationship with Big Oil is nothing new, and it predisposes Republicans to be hostile to anything that gives people an alternative to gas guzzling 2 ton steel boxes for transportation. Republicans also have an irrational malicious hate for anything green, because addressing Climate Change is best accomplished by government orchestrating the response, and that is antithetical to their world view. And of course Public Transit is public, provided by a public entity, all the more reason for Republicans to hate it. One often overlooked reason for Republicans to hate transit is to maintain segregated housing patterns, as Scott Walker did so effectively as the County Executive of Milwaukee Co."
citisven explained that Amsterdam Biking Paradise Didn't Happen Overnight: "30% of all Dutch people ride their bike to work
49% of primary school kids in Holland ride their bike to school. The 2010 Benchmarking Report on bicycling and walking in the U.S., released by The Alliance for Biking and Walking last year, confirms how far ahead of everyone else the Dutch are in kicking the driving habit:
In Highway to the Bridge to Nowhere: Matt Osborne deconstructed the transporation impact of the GOP's Roadmap to America's Future: "Beginning with $9 billion in proposed cuts under H.R.1, the Republican majority has doubled-down with Paul Ryan's proposal to cut $1.5 billion in high speed rail corridors and cut the federal budget for public transit nearly in half. Their budget will slow or stop repair of unsafe bridges, subway and rail safety upgrades, a broad range of new transit projects, unsafe intersection improvements, small ports modernization, and clean water controls. The safety case cannot be overstated. Contrary to the NTSB's urgent calls for safety improvements to the Washington Metro, for example, Republicans would completely eliminate funding to improve signaling."
Magnifico noted that 24 stateshave asked to board the $2.4 billion high-speed train leaving Florida: "The Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday that it"received more than 90 applications from 24 states, the District of Columbia, and Amtrak" requesting the opportunity to put to good use the $2.4 billion for high-speed passenger rail that Florida rejected. Taken altogether, the requests total nearly $10 billion, over four times the amount available. The response is an strong endorsement for the high-speed rail's future in the United States."
Air Pollution, Water Pollution & Hazardous Waste
NNadir wrote about a Potentially Carcinogenic Dishwashing Detergent Leaching Directly Into the Water Supply.: "Note that the routinely found levels of these compounds were several thousands of times the regulatory limits allowed in Australia."
Round-ups, Wrap-ups, Live Blogs & Summaries
Gulf Watchers #496 by Lorinda Pike: A Bonus for Death - BP Catastrophe.
Gulf Watchers #497 by shanesnana: BP Could be Back in Gulf Soon- BP Catastrophe: ""
Gulf Watchers #498 by perasperaBOP Autopsy FAIL & Containment System FAIL - BP Catastrophe.
Gulf Watchers #499 by Lorinda Pike: Blackmail and Dolphin Death - BP Catastrophe.
enhydra lutris: The Daily Bucket: " So, in Castro Valley today, there are House finches, American goldfinches, Lesser goldfinches, Oak titmouse, Western scrub jay, California Towhee, White crowned sparrows, Chestnut backed chickadees, a Nuttal's woodpecker, Mourning doves, crows and squirrels, along with native bumble bees and many flowering plants. it is in the sixties, sunny and clear."
bwren: The Daily Bucket: " The forest canopy is too high for me to see in detail but the wind brought a bit of it down to my level. The first thing I noticed was the fragrance: spicy, sweet, resinous. The sap is up in the Black Cottonwoods (Populus trihocarpa) and their discarded leaf bracts are everywhere. They leave perfumed sap all over your hands when you touch them, stick to your shoes, your clothes and your dog. Those of us who walk in the forest say that spring arrives when the parrots return and the fragrance of cottonwood fills the air."
Mark Sumner: The Daily Bucket: Spring? Edition: "Remember exactly one week ago when I was waking up to 8" of wet snow and trees bowed under the weight of white stuff? Yeah, that's hard to believe today. Right this moment, the temperature outside is 88 degrees, and that's accompanied by a howling wind that feels like it originated in the Sahara. Or possibly a really large George Foreman grill. As a result, inside my newly completed greenhouse, where I had just stocked a nice selection of blueberries and trays of seedlings, it is currently 115 degrees -- and that's with the vents and the doors wide open. We get it, damn it. We screwed up and now we're gonna pay."
Mark Sumner: The Daily Bucket: Cold, Warm, and Tornado Edition: "While St. Louis is settling into more spring-like temperatures, eastern Wyoming is still enjoying an eastern Wyoming spring. That it, there was a light dusting of snow, chilly temperatures, and the standard Wyoming dose of gusting winds. It appears to be a good year for pronghorns, as I saw literally hundreds along the highway south of Gillette. In one field, I could see more than a hundred at one time, spread out along several low rises. Mixed in with them were some knots of mule deer. I saw no elk, though I know they're around."
Fukushima Nukes
boatsie: Japan: "A Nested Disaster" ROV #39.
louisev: ROV #40: Water, Water Everywhere - Radiation Leaks Continue.
boatsie: Fukushima 'Water Glass' Stems Radioactive Leak into Pacific: ROV #41.
Drewid: Fukushima 'Water Glass' Stems Radioactive Leak into Pacific: ROV #42.
boatsie: Japan- The Fear of Magnitude Zero: ROV #43.
peraspera: Japan- Still leaking & #1 temp spike: ROV #44.
FOYI: Bodies of Two Missing Workers Found at Fukushima: "TEPCO officials said that both had died of bleeding from multiple wounds. The workers, who belonged to the operation management division of TEPCO, are believed to have died around 4 p.m. local time on March 11, apparently after the 2:46 p.m. quake triggered a massive tsunami, the Kyodo news agency reports."
kbman: Fukushima Status Update 4/4: "he most significant news I believe was the announcement of various modeling results in an article in the New York Times today. This included at statement from Dr. Steven Chu regarding the DOE's best guess estimates regarding the condition of the cores at units 1-3. He described unit 1 as having an estimated 70% of the core damaged with 33% damage at unit 2 and some unspecified amount of damage at unit 3. I will discuss this more below in New Speculation."
Radical def: Fukushima: Greenpeace Monitors Japan: Evacuate!: "Greenpeace monitors have warned the Japanese government to evacuate the town of iitate, due to elevated radiation levels of a year's dose in just a few days, but no evacuation has been ordered or advised by the government.Greenpeace rocks. Governments tend to suck."
freshrant: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster"A Horrifically Dangerous Event": " As of this writing, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Commission) calls the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant"very serious." It was just four days after the accident, that Cenk Uygur, conducted a little noticed interview on March 15th on MSNBC. The following comments were made during Uygur's discussion with Ken Bergeron, a physicist and nuclear reactor specialist, who conducted research on nuclear accident simulations during his 25 years at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. What was different about this interview, it was not with a past or present NRC spokesperson or nuclear power plant operator or technician. In other words, like so many other interviews of the past three weeks, Dr. Bergeron does not live and breathe within the nuclear power industrial complex, but has dedicated his research to examining the nuclear power industry."
nathguy: Fukushima: the sense that profit for a few is taking precedence over the safety of many: "When this whole thing started, in the first day or so I knew it was going to be very bad and cascade. I didn't want to be right, I'd much rather be wrong, but, what troubled me was the people going 'WhoCodaNew.' The Bush Administration spent 8 years doing that, and we see the same thing from TEPCO, The Japanese Government, NRC, GE, American Nuclear Society, Shills like Margaret Harding and even members of this Community."
mahakali overdrive: TEPCO Tries & Fails to Stop Radioactive Leak to Sea: Japan Nuclear Incident - ROV #38.
vets74: Fukushima Media Frenzy: "The boring truth is that the plant crew at Fukushima plugged the crack, they got 12,000 tons of low-rad water shifted to the ocean (to avoid endangering personnel with cartage operations), the robots are working 24/7 for contact spotting, and aerial radiation continues to decline."
Wee Mama: Early Chronology of the Fukushima Nuclear Events: " The Fukushima nuclear plant has us on tenterhooks as we watch the ongoing efforts to contain the radioactive contamination from the damaged reactors. Insight into what is happening there and and what might happen there depend on understanding how the accident happened and how it unfolded in the early days. A recent summary of the incident put forth by the energy company Areva puts together in one concise statement those early events."
LeftOfYou: This Can't Be Good for Fukushima or for USA.: " In the the daily Fukushima Nuclear nightmare recap, the juxtaposition of two of the bullet points really jumped out at me from the present situation with the damaged reactors at Fukushima. 'TEPCO continues to inject nitrogen into No 1 reactor to prevent another hydrogen explosion. Officials estimate it will take months to stabilize the nuclear reactors and years to clean up toxic fallout.' Sounds reassuring, doesn't it. … Well, actually, I don't feel better, because I know that Nuclear Reactor No. 1, like its brothers and sisters all over the world, was designed and built and operated with many tons of the most highly purified zirconium."
Rock Strongo: Heartbreaking Video from Japan Nuclear Evacuation Zone: " A couple of brave reporters from videonews.com decided to enter the evacuation zone around the Fukishima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan and see how close they could get to the plant. The video that they have posted on youtube is at once heartbreaking (especially for dog lovers), fascinating, frightening, and suspenseful, as the radiation meter gives the readings as they get closer and closer to the plant."
akmk:
Fukushima Update: Fresh Concerns Abound: "United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission..."
akmk: Toshiba Eyes Big Contract for Nuclear Cleanup: "Nothing like a good nuclear catastrophe to boost American jobs and corporate profits."
Deep HarmTests blow radiation theory out of the water: "Since the emergency began at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, officials in Japan and the United States have frequently disagreed on protective actions. But, on the issue of radioactive contamination of fish, both governments embraced a longstanding and widespread assumption that"dilution" would eliminate any threat of dangerous contamination of seafood. So confident was the Japanese government that it didn't even have a radiation standard for fish...until yesterday, when authorities found excessive levels of radiation in lance fish (konago) found 50 miles south of the reactors."
Brian RossOne Fish, Two Fish, Radioactive Fish, New Fish: "Very few news agencies other than the New York Times and a handful of European papers are reporting much detail about damage that the water spilling out of the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan into the Pacific Ocean is causing. We lack scientifically-trained reporters, and what is being done to the environment and to the global fisheries is complex, profound, and difficult to explain to the general public."
finehelen10: Uranium Conference Adds Discussion of Japan Accident: "The Uranium Fuel Cycle Conference has added a new special session to the event, scheduled for April 27-28 in Hobbs."Japan and Nuclear Energy: What Went Wrong and Its Impact” will feature a policy impact presentation from an official from the Department of Energy. Conference organizer Dr. Daniel Fine of the N.M. Center for Energy Policy announced Monday that the additional event will give experts a forum to discuss public health and safety, which have stepped to the forefront of nuclear energy discussions since the accident in Fukushima, Japan."
Erasmussimo: Fukushima: The Bottom Line: "We now have enough preliminary data to start making some decent first-cut estimates of the total population dose due to Fukushima. This is the real bottom line. All those scary stories don't add up to a hill of beans -- the only thing that matters for purposes of public policy is the casualty count. The financial costs of the accident will be carefully analyzed by power companies all over the world and will have their impacts on the financial planning of those companies; the public need not concern itself about such financial calculations because, if there's anything we can be certain of, it's that the power companies will keep a sharp eye on their bottom lines.