Monday, February 24, 2014

Coal Shuts Down W Va Drinking Water, Oil the Mississippi; Pollution, Corruption, Injustice, Unsustainable

Oil shuts down 65 MILES of Mississippi Here. Coal ash threatens North Carolina and Virginia Here. Coal-related chemical spill proves no such thing as clean coal Here. U.S. Gov mum on long-term effects. Ukrainian uber-corruption (what 1-2%ers are fighting for in America) Here.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

"Iran, Six Big Powers Agree Seek Basis for Nuclear Accord" -- Let's Hope So

Here Iran would do best to not be fucking around here. Diplomacy, and transparent peaceful energy production = back in the league of nations as a civilized country. Delays, dodging inspections and more fucking around = more ever severe sanctions and/or bombs (eventually, unfortunately). Those are two options they can expect, and can largely choose one.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Obama Ups Fuel Standards, Kellogg's Doing the Right Thing - Sourcing Responsibly Farmed Palm Oil

Here Nice!! For islands, habitat, biodiversity and climate. They will no longer buy palm oil from companies that employ deforestation, but only those that responsibly, sustainably harvest the (not really healthy anyway, junk food additive) oil. Great news.

And Obama's upping gas mileage standards for larger vehicles, saving money, gas and climate emissions for all of us. Sweet, more please. Here

Monday, February 17, 2014

John Kerry Calls Climate Change 'World’s Most Fearsome' Weapon Of Mass Destruction | ThinkProgress

John Kerry Calls Climate Change 'World’s Most Fearsome' Weapon Of Mass Destruction | ThinkProgress

feel_lucky_v2"Secretary of State John Kerry gave perhaps his strongest climate speech in Indonesia Sunday. He called climate change the “world’s most fearsome” weapon of mass destruction and said “the science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3D movie. It’s warning us; it’s compelling us to act.”
At the same time, a must-read new analysisby Oil Change International finds that “all of the scenarios used by the State Department” in their Final Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline “result in emissions that put us on a path to 6 degrees C (11°F) of global warming according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).” Talk about mass destruction!"
KXL

Kerry's Almost Right: Today it Is Bigger: John Kerry: Climate change as big a threat as terrorism, poverty, WMDs

Happy Olympics. Loving the events! The US is doing pretty well. And vs. Russia in the medal count too. Remember what a big deal that was growing up in the Cold War? Makes me nostalgic (loved the Soviet/US astronaut friendship feature), thinking how some big things have changed. Now bigger threats, rather than worrying about Soviet nukes, are terrorism and climate change. The second is positioned to be the worst by far. Quiet and insidious, one of the problems with climate change is that it's an adversary that is tough to envision (big hint: oil, coal, individual apathy and the power of greed). We as a great country rally. Bode Miller got bronze. If we as a nation get this on the podium, we will win.

Us/you. Do our part. Next car HAS TO BE an electric car. Turn off lights not used in your house. Let a reputable company -- at $0 to you -- put solar panels on your roof and sell you the sun's clean energy. Lower your bill. solarcity.com sungevity.com They'll give free quotes. Be mindful and ACT, help, send letters, call your politicians, at least sign big petitions. Take your kids to the first leg of the historic cross-country Climate March that starts in LA March 1st. http://climatemarch.org/

Them: Urge politicians to pass a carbon cap, and carbon tax in the U.S.http://citizensclimatelobby.org/options-for-action/current-actions/ Tell them the EPA must close down coal plants today until they can come online without spewing such pollution. We need to get to 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. This needs to start today.

(CNN) -- Saying that climate change ranks among the world's most serious problems -- such as disease outbreaks, poverty, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on all nations to respond to "the greatest challenge of our generation."

Kerry said he and Obama had no time for what he called the "Flat Earth Society." It will soon be too late for action to prevent the immense costs of doing nothing. People who refuse to look at the evidence and agree on change are "burying their heads" in the sand, he said.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

"U.S., China Agree to Work on Climate Change"

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA1E05320140215?irpc=932

Well, "work" is not planning.

If "...The two sides "commit to devote significant effort and resources to secure concrete results" by the Sixth U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue later this year, the statement added."

Then we need concrete results of lowering atmospheric CO2, not planning on it.
Not agreeing to plan for it.
We NEED to start LOWERING atmospheric CO2. Not
slowly curtailing emissions decades from now.
We should be turning off coal powered plants today.
These polluting behemoths must be retrofitted with the best scrubbers money can buy if they are ever let online again. And governments might need to help pay for that. And governments must lead and help subsidize a WWII-like effort of manufacturing rows and rows of wind turbines and solar fields, combined with private investment, and citizen micro-investment, until they are flying off of assembly lines and into power grids in every continent on the planet.

Kerry to Urge Climate Change Action

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26214135

Urging is not action, his job is to act.
The diplomacy is nice, Asia has much to lose with accelerated climate change.
Action this year, increased fossil fuel caps, carbon tax, and renewable subsidies critical in 2013-2014.
A major accord CRUCIAL by 2015.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Secretary Kerry: Say No to Keystone XL

Secretary Kerry: Say No to Keystone XL 

Help yourself at link. Letter customized from the Center for Biological Diversity and sent to John Kerry today:

http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=14997 

"As someone concerned with climate change and water, I want to thank you for your years of climate leadership during your time in the Senate. Now, as secretary of state, you have the opportunity to have an even greater influence on combating climate change.

New evidence is just emerging from the University of Toronto that the processing of the tar sands emits two to three times more pollutants than the corporations had claimed.1 "It was shocking to me to understand that current environmental impact assessments do not take this into account at all," said said Jonathan Martin, an associate professor in the department of division of environmental toxicology at the University of Alberta. Speaking of corporations, it's been noted that there are layers of conflicts of interest within the flawed report itself. 2  An ill-fated and inappropriate project like this will continue to unearth smoking guns and impropriety because: it is a bad idea. You have to separate America from this dirty project, which has no merit for the United States.

Climate action starts at home, and one of the first and clearest actions you could take would be to recognize that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is a climate issue. The evidence is overwhelming that Keystone XL would increase production levels of tar sands oil in Alberta, and therefore significantly add to carbon emissions. Moreover, the massive investment would lock us into dependence on this dirty fuel for decades, exacerbating carbon pollution just when we badly need to go quickly, decisively in the opposite direction.

President Obama will have the final say on the Presidential Permit for Keystone XL, but your department -- as the lead agency -- will point the way. Although the State Department's environmental impact statement underestimated the likelihood that the Keystone XL pipeline would fuel climate change, you can set the record straight in your National Interest Determination.

I only ask for an honest review of the effect that Keystone will have on our environment and especially on climate change. I am sure that once you have studied the issue carefully, you will see that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is a significant climate trigger and must be stopped.

1.  http://news.yahoo.com/oil-sands-pollution-two-three-times-higher-thought-210153802.html

2. http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/climate-cover-collusion-and-conflict-interest-keystone-xl-report

Sincerely,

Saturday, February 1, 2014

The Keystone XL Pipeline idea is a blunder, a misguided obsolete folly that needs to stop now

Open letter, sent to Sec. of State John Kerry, President Obama, and others:

I'm still shocked and disturbed that the State Department Keystone XL EIS underestimates the effects of the project on climate. The Pentagon has said concretely that climate change is one of the largest threats to our national security and well being in the future.1 This accelerates that undeniably.

The environmental impacts are significantly adverse as well, to the Canadian Boreal forests, Athabasca watershed, water quality, wildlife, humans and potentially the safety of communities in the US under which the pipeline would travel.2  Generating toxic trailing ponds from Tar Sands development has increased cases of cancer in local water sheds.2 Neil Young who visited in person says the project site looks like Hiroshima. The U.S. lead agency must consider the whole project, even though impacts would be greatest in Canada (and ultimately in the air).
In sum the project as a whole generates significant, adverse, unmitigatable environmental climate impacts and significant, adverse ground and water impacts in Canada and potentially in the U.S. This permit should be denied.

The statement that Canada will extract for eventual burning all that Tar Sands oil without the pipeline anyway can NOT BE PROVEN.3 Canadians themselves are resisting a pipeline be built of this dirty, difficult and expensive to extract and environmentally devastating oil in their own country.4 It is IMPOSSIBLE to state that the Tar Sands development will continue as the EIS states even if the XL is not built, seeing the face of strong opposition of this dirtiest of fuels everywhere. That is a fallacy, and should be removed from the report.

What is the compelling U.S. interest in allowing this project in the face of these negative impacts? For several thousand jobs for a couple months? It's been projected the pipeline will generate only a few dozen long-term jobs in the U.S. (but perhaps part-time work for all the clean-up crews that will be called in to "try" to remove the tar sludge when the pipeline would break/leak and U.S. communities and watersheds are under black gunk). The U.S. is unlikely to even use most of that eventual "oil," which is slated for foreign export.5 So energy security can't be it. The ONLY people to benefit in the long-term are the owners of the oil company and the refinery on the Gulf. That's it.

Allowing the pipeline to be built across the U.S. furthermore creates a green light for this market, growing additional like projects and adding cumulative effects there, creating worse climate change. We've seen the Pentagon say climate change is one of the worst risks to U.S. security. We can't keep growing the damn oil industry. That part, while less technical, is very clear.

LET'S PLEASE think of the long-term for the rest of us. The damage this pipeline will help wreak far outweighs any other benefits, for the few and fleeting, it could provide.
We must work with Canada on renewable, affordable, non-destructive energy, and to leave this obsolete, climate changing dirty oil in the ground, forever. If the State Department is truly looking after our best interests and enforcing its Environmental Impact Statement duties, denying this permit is the only choice to make.

1 Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

2 Pipeline leak brings crude reality to Arkansas http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/01/us/arkansas-pipeline-spill/ There are currently over 720 billion litres of toxic tailings on the landscape in the Athabasca oil sands area. There is currently a lack of publicly available information on the rate and volume of seepage from oil sands tailings ponds, despite known incidents involving tailings seepage. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2009-09-22/environmental-impacts-oil-sands-development-alberta
What does environmental devastation look like? http://www.ted.com/talks/garth_lenz_images_of_beauty_and_devastation.html http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/borealbirds.pdf Wildlife/birds http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/borealbirds.pdf Impacts http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5287

3 Estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency found that Keystone would increase annual carbon emissions by “up to 27.6 metric tons, or the equivalent of nearly 6 million cars on the road.” Without the pipeline, tar sands production is estimated to fall flat by 2020.  http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/03/1663291/states-keystone-report-is-the-tar-sands-pits/

4 While it is entirely possible that Canada could and will choose to ship its oil sands crude to Asia, that would require a another pipeline that some native groups in Canada have opposed in the past.  http://science.time.com/2013/03/01/state-dept-build-the-keystone-pipeline-or-not-the-oil-sands-crude-will-flow/#ixzz2MVuHbF48

5 By skipping over refineries and U.S. consumers in the Midwest, tar sands producers will be able to send Canadian crude to the Gulf Coast refineries in tax-free Foreign Trade Zones, where it can be refined and then sold to international buyer--at a higher profit to big oil.
http://priceofoil.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/KXL_undermine_energy_security_2page_Web.pdf

Sunset, Venice 12/20/2012

Sunset, Venice 12/20/2012
I've been thinking some about the Winter Solstice, the Mayan end of the 30,000-year-cycle on 12/21/12.

What if in fact the world did end? Even though this probably will not happen, to live consciously it is honest for us to take a bit of an inventory.

Am I happy with how I've lived my life? (Yesterday, I thought mostly yes, with some areas for improvement, as below.) Are there changes I would make?
Would I have tried to forgive those that were hostile or disappointing to me?
Would I spend more time with those I loved the most, telling them that, feeling that more?
Would I be happier, grateful for what I have, what I've experienced, the joy, the beauty in this world?

Maybe the answer is yes to all of the above.
So this time can serve as a point of rebirth for all of us. If we think about it.

Because somewhere along the line I realized I think maybe mankind deserves it. !
The way we are killing each other, killing the planet.
How selfish we are, and snotty to those around us. Petty, competitive. Why is this? Do we have to behave this way? (I say no, it greatly detracts and misdirects energy from the full-time celebration in which we could engage, the great multi-cultural, multi-rhythmic dance we can sustain here.)

Maybe God or the Great Universe is fed up, and will pull the rug out from under us.
Don't think I can say we could blame Him/Her/It.

But it probably won't happen. (Probably not! This time.)

Still we are finite on this ride.

It is a time to think, am I happy with how I've lived my life?
Hopefully most of us can say yes.

For the part of us that have a little worry, a little sadness....
This is the time to be present.
This is the time to be the person you want to be, that can die at peace, that can hope to every day be able to look yourself and the Universe in the eye and say, how beautiful, smiling, and thank you. Let's do that.

Antidotes to Violence, a.k.a., Take Charge of Where Your Head's At - here

Tell Congress to Strengthen Gun Control Laws NOW - here

Good News & Brain Food News -
Christians & Muslims Gather, for Peace here
Good News - Top RIO+20 Summit Posts here
The 'Busy' Trap - NYTimes.com
here