Amid the hullabaloo of the news about Iran’s agreeing not to make weapons from its nuclear capacity in exchange for the West’s lifting economic sanctions, none of those cheering—or raging—about this “historic understanding,” as President Obama put it to his email list, bothered to raise a long-standing and important question obvious to most of us since the Fukushima meltdown began in 2011. And millions since the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown.
When a Rockefeller decides to divest fossil fuel investments, heads turn. After all, America’s pioneer/father of oil production is John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) founder of America’s first great business trust, Standard Oil Company, dominating the oil industry for years.
Barely discernible among the surrounding rock-strewn ground, a meandering dirt track winds its way up a barren, windswept hill. In the arid heat, dotted amid the dry ocher soil, the rocks look baked from the sun. A few stubby trees and scrubby bushes bestrew a landscape with no obvious signs of habitation in this parched land of northern Kenya. But on top of the hill, sitting behind a low wall made of the abundant stones that litter the ground, we find six men. They have been living on the hill for eight years.
Imagine this scenario: The following is a Public Service Announcement by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Water, July 4, 2015: Because of low water levels in state reservoirs, the Division of Water proclaims a statewide water-rationing program. Starting next month, on August 1st, 2015, water service will turn off at 1:00 P.M. on a daily basis for an indeterminate period of time. Service will return the following morning.
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.
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.
O my friends, there are resources in us on which we have not drawn.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
At the speed global water conversion from foul-to-fresh is spreading around the globe—via inexpensive household solar ‘desal’ units—a few hundred billion ordinary people will NOT go thirsty.
This week tens of thousands of people in the United States flooded the streets to demand racial justice. It is one of many issues that has been building for years, reaching the tipping point and seeming to explode in a national awakening. We also saw that in the last two weeks with national protests for living wages.
On November 18, Senate Democrats derailed Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline plans. For now. Republicans controlling next year’s 114th Congress vowed to continue fighting for passage. It remains to be seen what follows.
Obama is veto-shy. Twice only so far. Compared to GW Bush’s 12. Including pocket vetoes. Clinton’s 37. Reagan’s 78. Dwight Eisenhower’s 181. Truman’s 250. FD Roosevelt’s astonishing 635. Overriding presidential vetoes seldom happens.
Throughout US history, presidents vetoed legislation 2,564 times. Overridden 110 times. Around 4% of the time.
