An overheated planet doesn’t just mean an extraordinarily early blooming of cherry trees and daffodils. It means rising sea levels all along our coasts from melting glaciers inundating East and West coasts and all Gulf states.
Coursing through the trackless wastes between Toronto and Winnipeg, our intrepid reporter Rap (short for “rapporteur,” just to add a touch of class), taking a leaf from Stephen Colbert (Col-bear) and his Report (pronouced Re-poor), checked in recently. In fact the paper trail of his expense account items continued, meandering across Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, notably hovering in Camden, N.J. with an item for $139.50 dateline Moe’s Jazz Society. But no matter. He’s now in Atlantic City and has updated us with a full report.
The big oil price crash is a question that seems to be front and center on the mind of financial markets these past few months, but, not to worry, it’ll come back up, it always does! So goes the reasoning of oil analysts and investors, but what if something other than supply temporarily overriding demand is at work on a longer-term basis, then what?
In this sedition we look at the economic clusterfuck enveloping the globe, the mega drop in oil prices and the Greek political party that has the left screaming like Justin Bieber fans, plus some uplifting hip hop to help you pull through from your shitty situation.
Conservatives in Congress have once again proven they are un-American and unpatriotic. This time, it’s because of their fierce approval for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The pipeline, being built and run by TransCanada, will bring tar sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. All the oil will be exported. Major beneficiaries, including House Speaker John Boehner, are those who invest in a Canadian company.
Like the vast majority of people in this country, I knew nothing about the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission until maybe 2-3 years ago. Since then, through my CCAN work fighting the plans for the Cove Point LNG export terminal at Cove Point, Md., through my work in New Jersey fighting a compressor station and pipeline going through the county where I live, and through my work in the mushrooming movement in the Marcellus Shale region and elsewhere against fracked gas infrastructure and exports, I have unfortunately learned a great deal about FERC.
Is abrupt climate change already here?
There are some serious scientists who believe it is already here. If their analysis is correct, the world could turn nearly uninhabitable within current lifetimes.
Neoconservatives arrayed in their Washington offices are congratulating themselves on their success in using the Charlie Hebdo affair to reunite Europe with Washington’s foreign policy. No more French votes with the Palestinians against the Washington-Israeli position. No more growing European sympathy with the Palestinians. No more growing European opposition to launching new wars in the Middle East. No more calls from the French president to end the sanctions against Russia.
A veil of methane originating in the Arctic is heading southward, slowly spreading all across the Northern Hemisphere.
As it happens, with 2014 the “hottest year ever,” the Arctic heats up evermore. It is especially vulnerable to the effects of heat-trapping green house gas (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO2). In turn, the warming Arctic is stirring up humanity’s biggest nightmare, methane (CH4).
Is the climate movement at a political tipping point? Could right now, 2015, this moment in history, be something akin to the 1964-1965 period for the civil rights movement? Those were the years that two major pieces of legislation, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, ended legal segregation in the South and opened the way for a whole series of positive social, cultural, and political changes in the USA in the years since.
