A simple documentary premiere, in a small town north of Vancouver, WA, on the Columbia, a town called Kalama, near Longview, where millions of stripped logs from the Pacific Northwest’s forests are stacked 20 stories high, waiting for markets (sic) in Asia to be turned into lumber and cardboard and stuffing and paper and snot sheets for the U S of A.
Paris COP21 captured the attention of the world for two weeks as over 190 countries agreed to agree for the first time since Dr. James Hansen testified before a Senate committee in 1988, introducing the world to the dangers of greenhouse gases.
COP21, with its profuse sweat under bright lights and sleepless nights, resulted in an agreement praised by mainstream media all across the world but universally panned by climate change advocacy groups.
The best that the high level climate talks in Paris (COP21) can achieve is to agree measures and actions to limit the increase in global temperature of our planet to 2C. Scientists, however, believe that even our best efforts will see a rise of 3C. Leaders of the industrialized rich west believe that the consequences of such a rise can be mitigated in their own countries by their advanced technology and expertise. For some countries in the developing world, however, such a rise in temperature would be devastating.
You say you got a real solution,
Well, you know we’d all love to see the plan, oh yeah …
— John Lennon, 1968
Tom Guild (OK-05)With the renewable energy sector already creating far more jobs-- and far better jobs-- than fossil fuel extraction, its difficult to understand why Republicans are so hysterically opposed to the thriving new industry. Difficult until you look at the Big Oil & Gas payroll for Congress. Last year alone, Big Oil and Gas rewarded their Republican congressional allies with $26,850,111 in legalistic bribes.
So the British government’s response to climate change is to go nuclear. The Hinkley Point nuclear power station is to be built jointly by Chinese companies and the French state-owned energy company EDF. The cost of building the plant is estimated to be £25bn. For the deal to go ahead the UK has to provide a guarantee worth £2bn. In addition the government has to provide EDF with a guaranteed price of electricity generated at twice today’s price for 35 years.
It’s the morning of the twelfth day that I haven’t been eating. The only things I’ve been putting into my body are lots of water, salt, potassium and a multi-vitamin.
How do I feel? Weak, very weak, as do most of the others—about 15 as I write—who are also fasting and intend to do so until September 25, the day after the people’s pope speaks to Congress. 11 of the 15 are also, like me, on the twelfth day of water-only.
In March 2015, Raw Story interviewed Senator Ted Cruz.1
The interviewer challenged the senator about his wish for millions of young voters to turn out. Yet, he’s against pot, gay marriage, and doesn’t believe global warming is man-made all of which the interviewer claims young people have a different view. The senator chose to refute the global warming claim.
What is the relationship between organizing to slow, stop and reverse the climate crisis, a very big job with a very close deadline, and organizing to bring together a unified movement against our oppressive system that links people concerned about climate, racial justice, women’s and LGBT rights, labor rights, peace, social and economic justice, equality and more?
Stone age politics continues its creaky, inscrutable way in Canberra, with the Australian Prime Minister keen to show his acute lack of understanding about the renewable energy sector. One wonders whether he believes in its existence at all. On this occasion, Tony Abbott decided that even his energy minister, Greg Hunt, wasn’t to feature in his decision on whether the Clean Energy Finance Corporation should continue to fund wind-related projects.
