We would do well to pause, and ponder both the data and implications presented in the Post Carbon Institute’s latest report, released a few days before Halloween, “Drilling Deeper: A Reality Check On U.S. Government Forecasts for a Lasting Tight Oil & Shale Gas Boom”.
English though I am, I was both angered and saddened by the result of the Scottish Referendum; saddened because I had hoped the Yes side would win, and angered because of all the sneering, negative and arrogant campaigning done by Westminster via the Better Together campaign. That didn’t go down too well so they brought in Gordon Brown to do his patriotic bit, which included talking about how many Scots had fought and died in the UK’s wars. To quote:
What does the Keystone XL pipeline mean to you? Unless you have been schooled in the process of producing oil from tar sands and transporting it, along with the deadly mess it leaves, you probably don’t know. Fortunately, with a little effort of discovery, there is enough proof of its costs. Some are quite deadly.
America’s national energy policy is not green; it is dark & oily, backward, cloddish, and out of touch with the realities of today’s world of modern technology. It’s archaic.
Congress has at least one foot in the wrong century. This is the 21st not the 20th.
We the undersigned call upon the United States Senate, House of Representatives, and President Obama to work together to introduce, promote, and pass legislation that puts a price on carbon pollution and returns revenues to the American people, either directly or by reducing taxes.
— From Pricing Carbon Initiative’s Petition to the Congress and the President of the United States
All of the elements required to create climate justice seem to be in place. The climate movement can put hundreds of thousands on the streets, organize creative civil resistance, get thousands to risk arrest and mobilize blockades of tar sands, fracking, oil pipelines and mountain top removal.
The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the most worrisome so far. Paired with data from the 2014 National Climate Assessment, there is no question that the climate crisis is here and is accelerating at a faster pace than predicted. Its effects are widespread and dangerous, yet real solutions are being suppressed.
It’s 3 p.m., and you’re cruising down a rural road, doing about 50.
A quarter mile away is a sign, with flashing yellow lights, alerting you to slow down to 15. It’s a school zone.
But, you don’t see any children. Besides, you’re going to be late to your racquetball match. So, you just slide on past.
Hunter Biden & A Dodgy Company Called Burisma
Ukrainian politics has had the stench of corruption since the free-for-all to loot the country following the declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. However today, some five months after the gangster-led Washington-orchestrated coup d’etat that put the present regime illegally in power in Kiev, that stench is becoming unbearable. Now it involves the case of Ukraine’s deposits of shale gas.
