Environment

By David Swanson

Pulling pranks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is just too easy. The Yes Men held a press conference this week pretending to speak for the chamber and fooled the journalists in the room, because "We are no longer going to promote the destruction of the earth's climate" is such a compelling position that it's very tempting to imagine that any human being could adopt it.

But Tom Donohue and his chamber take the opposite position and have for years. William Kovacs, a senior vice president at the chamber, told the LA Times he'd like to stage a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" to deny, not evolution, but human-made climate change.

[Note: I contributed an article, my first ever published in the NY Post. --DS]

MEDIA HEIST BLANKETS CITY WITH "SPECIAL EDITION" NEW YORK POST
Tabloid Tells Truth About Climate Change and How It Will Affect City, World

Fake New York Post: http://www.nypost-se.com/
Video News Release: http://www.nypost-se.com/video
City report on climate change: http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/2009/NPCC_CRI.pdf
Wake-up call: http://www.tcktcktck.org/wakeup

Here's an announcement from CleanHouston.org about the climate fight, which parallels the health fight. The Democrats in both cases have produced bills that go 90% of the way to satisfying the industries responsible for the problems. In return, in both cases, those industries have used astroturf groups and the corporate media to generate pseudo-populist revolts against the impure efforts that did not provide 100% profit maximization:

Energy Citizens, a corporate-organized Astroturf alliance funded in large part by the American Petroleum Institute, is holding rallies in 20 states over the August congressional recess. The rallies aim to undermine the efforts to get climate legislation enacted at the federal level.

Creating Clean Energy Jobs: Helping People Helping the Environment

Tuesday, June 23, 2009, 11:00 a.m.

Congressman Tom Perriello
Homeowner Ingrid Feggans
Homeowner Chad Thorne
Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris
Albemarle County Supervisor Ann Mallek
Worker Michael Stewart
Chair of White House Council on Environmental Quality Nancy Sutley
Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality Van Jones (hovering but not speaking)

Backstory: Admirable, if insufficient, as this event was, there is an unpleasant context. The week before this event, Congressman Tom Perriello voted for $100 billion for wars (which he was happy to do) combined with $100 billion in loans to eastern European banksters through the International Monetary Fund (which he will likely be hammered for in television ads a year from now, and which he claims to have opposed even while voting for). The White House and Democratic Party leaders made a lot of promises and threats to pass the bill in a very close vote. The day before this event House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer came to Charlottesville for an event with Perriello. Now Van Jones and Nancy Sutley came. Who will be next? My money is on a south district event with a military big whig. You read it here first.

OPEN FOR VIDEOS

7:10 p.m. ET on Thursday: Mindy Lubber from CERES is one of the speakers, formerly at EPA; also Brad Figel global director of govt. affairs for Nike formerly at Senate finance committee (holding up a "sustainable shoe" and supposedly wanting to push Congress to pass "meaningful" climate legislation this year); (Rep. John Dingell seems to be late).

By David Swanson

This weekend in Washington, D.C., there was a lot of preparation for Monday's massive civil disobedience for clean energy at the Capitol power plant. Nonviolence trainings, sign creation, conferences. On Sunday night, just before it began snowing hard, I attended a gathering of authors, poets, singers, and the lead organizers of the action in a large university auditorium, and blogged as follows:

Please Join Us in Demanding the Resignation of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson

Johnson punishes whistleblowers, stonewalls Congress, and devastates the environment.

A coalition has formed to demand his resignation that includes the No Fear Coalition, AfterDowningStreet.org, Democrats.com, Friends of the Earth, the Black Leadership Roundtable, the Hip Hop Caucus, the Federally Employed Legal Defense Fund, the Congress Against Racism and Corruption in Law Enforcement, the Backbone Campaign, OpEdNews, World Prout Assembly, Code Pink, Why Not News, the Black Commentator, the Urban Journal, and the National Whistleblower Center.

Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, Member of Congress 1971- 1991, and Chair of the National Black Leadership Conference, has drafted an open letter demanding Johnson's resignation. You can read and sign the letter (which will add to a petition count and send an Email to your representative and two senators), and read much more about Stephen Johnson, at: http://johnsonmustgo.org

Please sign the letter right away:
http://johnsonmustgo.org

Please forward this message far and wide!

By David Swanson

In the back of your head have you ever thought that abandoning an American city and nearby towns to a predictable and predicted natural disaster, and then refusing to repair the damage, ought to be considered unacceptable behavior. On a grander scale, does it strike you that there is something seriously wrong with the Bush Administration's failure, not just to acknowledge global warming, but to take significant action to stop increasing it and begin reducing it? If we destroy our home will it matter that there wasn't a specific statute on the books banning the exacerbation of global warming?

By David Swanson

Were you aware that...?

A coffee cooperative in Minnesota makes money by creating fair trade and cutting out corporate middlemen.

Family farmers in Vermont survive and prosper by going organic and cooperative.

By David Swanson

George Will has pulled a trick out of Karl Rove's bag and begun attacking his opponents at his own weakest point. In his latest column, Will attempts to teach other people how to think straight. This has to be worth a few guffaws…

By David Swanson

The Cheney energy meeting, the Iraq Study Group, the Supplemental spending bill, the choice of which buildings to defend after Shock and Awe, Iraq's proposed new hydrocarbon law, the threat of an attack on Iran, and the sudden recognition of reality that comes from throwing away your television, all suggest that we've just wasted four years, hundreds of thousands of lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars, for oil. That ought to be sufficient reason to kick the oil habit. But we live in an age when sufficient reasons are never good enough and never all we get. In fact, it's much worse than we thought.

By David Swanson

Those are our two goals now, and we are facing dual catastrophes spearheaded by a single unimpeached president. Some people have understood the goals of peace and environmental protection for quite some time. If the Democratic Party ever finds its soul, when it arrives in Denver for the 2008 Convention it should honor a resident of that city who is currently 91-years-old.

By David Swanson

Unbeknownst to many Americans, there is overwhelming consensus among scientists that we are very close to reaching a point of no turning back on global warming, which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. We are approaching a point at which all of the following will become unavoidable: massive desertification, rising sea level, explosive growth of insect populations, widespread habitat destruction, mass extinctions, mass migrations (including of humans), the disappearance of sea life, and in all likelihood wars over drinking water that will make the wars over oil look civilized. These changes are likely to lead to human disease, starvation, and death on a scale that will dwarf the current reality, much less what Americans are currently able to imagine. The desperation and suffering involved, combined with the too-late awareness of the planet's fate, will almost certainly bring about a blossoming of religious and magical thinking that will make current American evangelists look reasonable.