Health & Environment
10 Ways Your Taxes Pay For Environmental Devastation
Wed, 09/01/2010 - 14:33 — Dave Culver
Despite recent green investments, an array of government subsidies pay big dirty industries like oil, coal and factory farms to destroy the environment in every way possible.
Stephanie Rogers EcoSalon
Urban sprawl, pollution, over-consumption, deforestation…like it or not, U.S. taxpayers are still paying for all of these things to occur in America and beyond. Despite recent investments in green jobs and technology, an array of government subsidies pay big dirty industries like oil, coal and factory farms to destroy the environment in every way possible while greener, healthier industries like solar power and vegetable farms get a pittance.
10. Highways
When gas prices rose dramatically in 2008, Americans began flocking to mass transit in droves, resulting in declining revenues for the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Naturally, the Bush Administration’s response was to take money from already underfunded mass transit and use it to pay for highways that are already, as Slate put it, “paved with gold”. Billions of dollars are pumped into the highway system every year, which encourages the polluting car culture and leads to further sprawl, while mass transit continues to fall by the wayside.
It's the Opportunity, Stupid!
Tue, 08/31/2010 - 15:20 — Dave Culver
The elected officials who steered this turnaround have abdicated their responsibility to uphold our nation's best interests, and have shown us, and the world, an America woefully deficient in both leadership and ingenuity.
Robert Redford, Huffington Post
Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Thomas Sklarski
A small minority of Senators robbed America of a cleaner, more prosperous future last week (July 18-24). In the middle of the biggest oil disaster in American history, the hottest summer on record, and a war with an oil-rich nation, this group of cynics blocked efforts to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation. This was the moment brimming with potential for new jobs, a more robust economy and cleaner environment -- this bill would have guided America down a profoundly safer and more productive path.
So therefore, the Senate is left to vote on an anemic energy bill of such remarkably limited scope that it could have been passed during the Bush era.
What is fuelling floods and fires?
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 11:32 — Dave Culver
- While most climate experts say that it is too soon to draw any conclusions about a link with climate change, many agree that current events fit in with the warnings issued by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) over the past 20 years.
- The truth: Still there, still inconvenient
- Who Cooked the Planet?
Julia Slater and Renat Künzi, Swiss Info
Tourists in Moscow wear face masks against the smog (Keystone)
As flooding in Pakistan disrupts millions of lives, and huge areas of Russian forest burn, many people are wondering whether they are linked.
Flooding of a 1,000km stretch along the Indus river has already claimed about 1,600 lives, and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes. Over 13 million people have been affected.
Corporations scoff at workers' rights--even the right to come home from work alive
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 08:59 — Dave Culver
OSHA, the agency scorned by labor haters, has been meek and weak
Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
Their names probably won't mean mean anything to you, but these people ought to have some modicum of personal recognition: Jason Anderson, Aaron Dale "Bubba" Burkeen, Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Gordon Jones, Roy Wyatt Kemp, Karl Kleppinger, Blair Manuel, Dewey Revette, Shane Roshto, and Adam Weise. These are the 11 workers who were killed when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank into the Gulf of Mexico on April 20.
Four months after the disaster, national media outlets continue extensive coverage of BP's calamitous well--as they should--showing us satellite pictures of the spreading plumes of pollution, footage of dead pelicans, estimates of the ecological horror on the ocean floor, analyses of the frantic efforts to stop the oil, commentaries on the astonishing arrogance of corporate executives, feature stories about the slick's impact on Gulf tourism, interviews with lawmakers demanding much tougher environmental protections, etc. ... but what about those people?
Related:
In West Virginia, coal miner's slaughter, Michael Winship, Salon