NewsTrust - Pollution - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

A case for branding the environment

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Ghanaian Chronicle - By William Abaidoo - Nov. 19 (Opinion) - Choosing a brand name for a product is important from a promotional perspective because brand names communicate product concepts and help position the product in the mind of customers. Names like Key (soap) Blue band (margarine), Omo (washing powder) Ideal (milk) ,Arid (antiperspirant deodorant) and spic and span (floor cleaner) all clearly communicate the benefits of using these products

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Obama Nominates Pesticide Executive to Be Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the Office of the US Trade Representative

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Amy Goodman - Nov. 17 (Interview) - President Obama’s nominee for the Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the office of the US Trade Representative, Islam Siddiqui is currently a vice president at CropLife America, a coalition of the major industrial players in the pesticide industry, including Syngenta, Monsanto, and Dow Chemical.

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The CEO Pay Debate: Why Reform Is Going Nowhere

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Chuck Collins, Sam Pizzigati - Sep. 04 (Opinion) - Shareholders have no reason to begrudge executives like these their fortunes. But the rest of us do. To grab those fortunes, after all, executives are making decisions that place our futures at risk. And that reality takes us right to the core of what's wrong with the current executive pay reform debate's single-minded focus on shareholders: Why should we let shareholders be the ultimate arbiters on the size of executive rewards when these rewards can and do create incentives for CEO behaviors that hurt people who aren't shareholders? In effect, all of us have become stakeholders in executive pay decisions - and we need, consequently, a stakeholder, not just a shareholder, approach to reform.

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If Dirt Could Talk ...

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Leslie Thatcher - Aug. 24 (Review) - I cannot think of another book I have ever read more true to its cover than Howard Wilshire, Jane Nielson and Richard Hazlett's "The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and Recovery." It is truly as though the three earth-scientist authors allowed the Western earth to speak,

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t r u t h o u t | The Climate Bill Shouldn't Give Coal a Free Pass

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Bruce Niles - Jul. 22 (Opinion) - Big Coal has long sought and enjoyed loopholes for their dirty industry - anything to keep the money rolling in as they avoid cleaning up. And now, over objections of our clean energy champions, this bill gives them another massive loophole that the Senate must correct.

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Dow Pitching New Pesticide That Doubles As an Extraordinarily Potent Greenhouse Gas

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - Jul. 13 (Press Release) - "The hazards of using sulfuryl fluoride in agriculture have not been evaluated. It is also 4,780 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide," said Dr. Brian Hill, a staff scientist at the Pesticide Action Network. "Either one of those facts makes permitting these tests a major mistake."

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Misconceptions plague debate over gas line proposals

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Anchorage Daily News - Jul. 01 (Editorial) - Exxon's decision to join forces with TransCanada has spurred a new round of debate over the best way to make sure Alaska gets a North Slope gas line. In that debate, some misconceptions are floating around and should be corrected.

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Why do we allow the US to act like a failed state on climate change

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Jun. 26 (Opinion) - There are mind-boggling concessions to the biofuels industry, including a promise not to investigate its wider environmental impacts. There's a provision to allow industry to use 2bn tonnes of carbon offsets a year, which include highly unstable carbon sinks like crop residues left in the soil (another concession won by the powerful farm lobby). These offsets are so generous that if all of them are used, US industry will have to make no carbon cuts at all until 2026.

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One More Threat to Clean Water

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jun. 25 (Editorial) - The latest indignity was a 6-to-3 decision on Monday that will allow an American gold mining company to discharge 210,000 gallons a day of potentially toxic mining waste into a 23-acre lake near Juneau, Alaska. A joyous Sarah Palin, Alaska’s governor, called the ruling a “great victory” for Alaska and, astonishingly, “a green light for responsible resource development.”

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Cap-and-Trade Delusions

Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Reason Magazine - By Ronald Bailey - May. 20 (Opinion) - Proponents need to stop pretending cap-and-trade will cost nothing and create tons of jobs.

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Good News, There's a Climate Bill -- Bad News, It Stinks

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Daphne Wysham - May. 19 (Opinion) - 1) It won't protect the poor from price-hikes as the price of carbon is slowly internalized into our energy bills, but will protect polluting industries by allowing them free pollution permits; 2) It opens the door to fraud and shell games instead of real climate action by setting up a huge carbon derivatives market; 3) It makes a mockery of our common understanding of "renewable energy," favoring dirty smokestacks over truly clean, renewable energy.

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From a Theory to a Consensus on Emissions

Sun, 17 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By John M. Broder - May. 17 (Opinion) - “It is a steel fist of regulation covered by a velvet glove of emission trading,” Mr. Montgomery said. “Why not just impose a carbon tax?”

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About that "Energy Independence" President Carter...

Sat, 16 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Lisa Margonelli - May. 16 (Opinion) - Energy Independence is a political term, but not a reality. The US has 3 percent of the worlds' oil reserves, and we use 24 percent of world's production with just 4-5 percent of the population. We've been committed to an industrial policy and a foreign policy built around oil imports since the 1930's, though we didn't really get into the soup until Roosevelt struck the Big Deal with Saudi Arabia in the early 1940's. Alternative sources of energy currently make up a pitifully small part of our energy mix.

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Earlier Puberty in European Girls

Mon, 04 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Tara Parker-Pope - May. 04 (Opinion) - A 15-year study of young girls in Denmark found that the average age of breast development has fallen by a full year compared to girls studied in the early 1990s. The findings, published this month in the journal Pediatrics, add to a growing body of evidence that the timing of puberty is changing, possibly related to environmental exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals that mimic estrogen in the body.

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Message in a Bottle

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Sierra Magazine - By David Ferris - Apr. 29 (Advocacy) - Seabirds are starving with bellies full of trash. Fur seals in New Zealand poop shards of yellow and blue. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas. Now the bad news: Plastic never goes away, and scientists are finding that it absorbs toxins with spongelike efficiency. The fix? Cut it off at the source.

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Pollution taxes work

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Charles Komanoff - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - The Environmental Defense Fund’s Fred Krupp threw down the gauntlet to carbon taxers in the Wall Street Journal last month: Environmental taxes have worked well to raise revenue, but without a cap they inevitably become a license to pollute in unlimited amounts. No air pollution problem has ever been solved except by imposing a legal limit on emissions. (emphasis added) This is a little like the Pope complaining that sex isn’t enough fun: how would he know? Pollution taxes have seldom been tried. But in the few cases where they’ve been tried, they’ve worked rather well.

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Moore’s Law and the Law of More

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - Apr. 25 (Opinion) - “Right now we’re paying a huge price — a tax — for everyone trying to achieve more in an unsustainable way. But the ‘More Tax’ is not imposed by the U.S. government. It is a tax imposed by the market and will continue rising indefinitely as more and more people want more and more stuff. It will steadily drive up gasoline prices, home heating prices and factory electricity prices. But because this ‘More Tax’ is set by the market and not the government, many opponents contend that there’s nothing to be done: ‘Oh, $4.50 a gallon gasoline — that’s just the market at work. We can’t do anything about that.’ And then all that tax money out of your pocket goes to enrich oil companies and petro-dictators.

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The campaign - The quest for 62 per cent

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Globe and Mail - By Dennis Baker - Apr. 23 (Comment) - I am thinking about running as a candidate.dennis baker-- The responce was to be arrested and charged with possesion for the purpose of trafficking.For some alleged drugs in a vehicle that I was a passenger Human excrement + nuclear waste = hydrogen

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Oil Spill Surface Cleanup Ignores Fish Below: Discovery News

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

dsc.discovery.com - By Emily Sohn - Apr. 10 (Research) - a new study suggests, the chemicals commonly used to clean up oil spills make oil far more toxic to fish, particularly for eggs and young fish

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Carbon Caps Are the Best Policy

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Fred Krupp - Mar. 24 (Opinion) - Curbing carbon emissions will spur a new generation of competition for the old ways of generating energy, especially from Big Oil. So when Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson says he favors a carbon tax over a cap-and-trade system, it's worth asking why the energy giant would want to put a government levy on its own product. Perhaps Exxon has concluded what many analysts already know: That the best chance to overhaul our oil-addicted economy is through a cap on fossil-fuel pollution. And that has Big Oil running for cover. A cap is not only a very different policy compared to a carbon tax, but a far superior approach, environmentally and economically. From an environmental point of view, the difference is stark. A cap is a legal limit on pollution. There is no guessing what will happen -- the level of emissions is set in law, and enforcement of that limit proceeds accordingly. No air pollution problem has ever been solved except by imposing a legal limit on emissions. Environmental taxes have worked well to raise revenue, but without a cap they inevitably become a license to pollute in unlimited amounts. Moreover, to require that other countries make the reciprocal commitments necessary to lower global pollution, we have to enact our cap -- and have other nations do the same in a transparent, verifiable and enforceable way. A carbon tax doesn't make such a system of commitments possible.

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Hope in the Mountains

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - Mar. 24 (Opinion) - Yesterday was a great day for the people of Appalachia and for all of America. In a bold departure from Bush-era energy policy, the Obama administration suspended a coal company's permit to dump debris from its proposed mountaintop mining operation into a West Virginia valley and stream. In addition, the administration promised to carefully review upward of 200 such permits awaiting approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

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Why Do Conservatives Hate Your Children?

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Joseph Romm - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - CQ Politics reports that the House GOP "offered six principles Wednesday that they say will guide them as they formulate an alternative to the president's ambitious plans": The principles reflect the minority's long-held views. GOP leaders said they will oppose any tax increases, either on income or energy, and will fight a cap-and-trade program to curb carbon dioxide emissions in order to combat global warming. Instead, the Republicans reiterated their "all of the above" energy proposals that stress new domestic oil and gas production and development of alternative energy sources. Here we have in one paragraph the essence of conservatives' long-held energy policy — the Big Energy Lie and the willful effort to destroy the health and well-being of your children and grandchildren and 50 generations after that:

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Increased Number Think Global Warming Is “Exaggerated”

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

gallup.com - By Lydia Saad - Mar. 15 (Research) - Americans generally believe global warming is real. That sets the U.S. public apart from the global-warming skeptics who assembled this week in New York City to try to debunk the science behind climate change. At the same time, with only 34% of Americans saying they worry "a great deal" about the problem, most Americans do not view the issue in the same dire terms as the many prominent leaders advancing global warming as an issue.

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Why the Global Economy Is a Ponzi Scheme and We Are All Bernie Madoffs

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Joseph Romm - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - As Thomas Friedman agrees in the next article, we have constructed the grandest of Ponzi schemes by living off future generations.

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President's trip to Canada defines critical carbon moment

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By James E. Hansen - Feb. 17 (Opinion) - The Canadian media are full of speculation that the Canadian government will push for special treatment and protections from global warming regulation of its fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions -- the tar sands oil development in Alberta, where much of Canada's oil is derived. Such protection would be disastrous for life on our planet. The tar sands of Canada constitute one of our planet's greatest threats. They are a double-barreled threat. First, producing oil from tar sands emits two to three times the global warming pollution of conventional oil. But the process also diminishes one of the best carbon reduction tools on the planet -- Canada's Boreal Forest.

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