How Nelson Mandela forever changed South Africa

E120, e145,

Who’s Your Farmer? Marshall Chrostowski at Pacifica Market Garden

E120, food-matters, e145,

“CIA Colluded With The Apartheid Regime To Find Mandela When He Was Disguised As A Chauffeur”

E120, e145,

Full Show 12/6/13: Remembering Mandela

E120, e145,

Can Hacking The Stratosphere Solve Climate Change?

by NPR/TED Staff August 09, 201310:01 AM  9 min 29 sec

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_keith_s_surprising_ideas_on_climate_change.html

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/06/209191273/can-hacking-the-stratosphere-solve-climate-change

“ We’re hiding a genuine, and I think not-wrong joy in the fact that we understand something about the world that potentially gives us the ability to do these things.

– David Keith

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode .

About David Keith’s TEDTalk

Environmental scientist proposes a cheap and shocking way to address climate change: What if we inject a huge cloud of sulfur into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight and heat?

About David Keith

Environmental scientist David Keith works at the intersection of climate science, energy, and public policy. His research has taken him into some the realms of geo-engineering — including a dramatic potential solution to climate change, such as blowing a cloud of sulfur into the sky to bring the average global temperature down.

His other areas of study include the , the economics and climatic impacts of large-scale wind power, and the use of hydrogen as a transportation fuel.

His forthcoming book is called A Case For Climate Engineering. He teaches policy and engineering at Harvard University, and was named by Canadian Geographic in 2006.

We might ask: “why is this being reported on by NPR in 2013 when the talk took place more than six years ago?  Is the public being “spun” again, with hi-tech pseudo “solutions” to ecological problems?  What’s next?  “Safe” nuclear power?

No doubt Professor Keith believes what he says, but that is not the issue.  The question is not whether he is sincere, but whether he is correct in seeking engineering solutions to ecosystemic problems.  Misguided sincerity in the form of techno-scientific salvationism could be as fatal to the human enterprise as any other of the religiously preached fundamentalisms currently promoted by would-be public leaders in search of faithful followers.

TED  Uploaded on Nov 15, 2007
http://www.ted.com Environmental scientist David Keith proposes a cheap, effective, shocking means to address climate change: What if we injected a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight and heat?

Related NPR Stories

Web Resources

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Robert Reich – Fast Food Striker

LowPay NotOk

Published on Dec 5, 2013

Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Food-Matters http://Food-Matters.TV

The Googlization of the Far Right: Why is Google Funding Grover Norquist, Heritage Action and ALEC? | PR Watch

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/11/12319/google-funding-grover-norquist-heritage-action-alec-and-more
Posted by Nick Surgey on November 27, 2013

Google, the tech giant supposedly guided by its “don’t be evil” motto, has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers.

Organizations

that received “substantial” funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference), and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action.

In 2013, Google also funded the corporate lobby group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, although that group is not listed as receiving “substantial” funding in the list published by Google.

U.S. corporations are not required to publicly disclose their funding of political advocacy groups, and very few do so, but since at least 2010 Google has chosen to voluntarily release some limited details about grants it makes to U.S. non-profits. The published list from Google is not comprehensive, including only those groups that “receive the most substantial contributions from Google’s U.S. Federal Public Policy and Government Affairs team.”

What Google considers “substantial” is not explained — no dollar amounts are given — but the language suggests significant investments from Google and, with a stock value of $330 billion, Google has considerably deep pockets.

Google has a distinctively progressive image, but in March 2012 it hired former Republican member of the House of Representatives, Susan Molinari as its Vice President of Public Policy and Government Relations. According to the New York Times, Molinari is being “paid handsomely to broaden the tech giant’s support beyond Silicon Valley Democrats and to lavish money and attention on selected Republicans.”

New “Substantial” Right-Wing Google Grants in Past Year

CMD examined the information released by Google for the years 2010 to 2013. The voluntary disclosures indicate that the following groups are either new grantees of Google since September 2012, or have been listed as having received a “substantial” Google grant for the first time:

• American Conservative Union
• Americans for Tax Reform
• CATO Institute
• Federalist Society
• George Mason University Law School Law and Economics Center
• Heritage Action
• Mercatus Center
• National Taxpayers Union
• R Street Institute
• Texas Public Policy Foundation

Detailed information on each of these groups can be found at CMD’s Sourcewatch website.

Google Funding for Anti-Government Groups

Heritage Action, the tea-party styled political advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, is perhaps the most surprising recipient of Google’s largesse.

More than any other group working to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Heritage Action pushed for a sustained government shutdown in the fall of 2013, taking the country to the brink of a potentially catastrophic debt default.

Laying the ground for that strategy, Heritage Action held a nine-city “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour” in August 2013, providing a platform for Texas Senator Ted Cruz to address crowds of cheering tea party supporters.

For Cruz, increasingly spoken of as a 2016 Presidential candidate, the government shutdown helped raise his profile and build his supporter — and donor — base.

Notably, Heritage Action received $500,000 from the Koch-funded and Koch-operative staffed Freedom Partners in 2012. It is not yet known how much Heritage Action received in 2013 from sources other than Google.

Perhaps surprisingly, Google has a history of supporting Cruz. Via its Political Action Committee – Google Inc. Net PAC – the PAC provided the “Ted Cruz for Senate” campaign with a $10,000 contribution in 2012. Additionally, despite being five years out from the freshman Senator’s next election, Google’s PAC has already made a $2,500 contribution to the Cruz reelection campaign for 2018, the largest amount that the PAC has given so far to any Senate candidate running that election year according to disclosures made by Google.

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), the anti-government group run by Republican operative Grover Norquist, was another new recipient of funding from Google in 2013. ATR is best known for its “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” and for its fundamentalist attacks on any Republican who might dare to vote for any increase in taxes. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, ATR received 85% of its funding in 2012 ($26.4 million) from the ultra-partisan Karl Rove-run Crossroads GPS, another dark money group.

ATR President Grover Norquist infamously said that he wants to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Google’s position on the relative size of government versus bathtubs is not known, but according to a Bloomberg analysis of Google’s U.S. corporate filings, it avoids approximately $2 billion dollars globally in tax payments each year through the use of creative tax shelters.

Bloomberg reported in May 2013 that in France alone Google is in the midst of a dispute over more than $1 billion in unpaid taxes that have been alleged. An August 2013 report by U.S. PIRG – “Offshore Shell Games” — found that Google is now holding more than $33 billion dollars offshore, avoiding taxes on these earnings in the United States.

….(read more).

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

What surprises could climate change have in store for us?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/04/what-surprises-could-climate-change-have-in-store-for-us/

The upshot? Earth is already seeing some abrupt changes, like the fast retreat of summer Arctic sea ice. There’s also a real risk that other rapid and drastic shifts could follow in the coming decades if the Earth keeps warming — including widespread plant and animal extinctions and the creation of large “dead zones” in the ocean.

On the flip side, other drastic changes “are now considered unlikely to occur this century.” That includes shifts in Atlantic ocean circulation patterns that could radically alter Europe’s climate, as hyped in the disaster flick “The Day After Tomorrow.” Also unlikely this century: Collapsing ice sheets in West Antarctica that would push sea levels up very quickly, as well as sudden methane eruptions from the Arctic that could heat the planet drastically. Those doomsday scenarios are left to future generations.

The authors do emphasize, however, that scientists still don’t fully understand all the different ways the Earth’s climate can change in short order. There are lots of unknowns here. “Some surprises in the climate system may be inevitable,” they conclude, “but with improved scientific monitoring and a better understanding of the climate system it could be possible to anticipate abrupt change before it occurs and reduce the potential consequences.”

Here’s a longer rundown of some of the abrupt changes the new National Research Council report explores, as well as how probable they are to occur this century (I’ve ordered them from most likely to least likely):

— Sharp increases in extinction rates. A recent study in Science found that the world is on track to warm much faster than it has in the past 65 million years. That could require some species to shift habitats at an unprecedented rate.

(Source: Diffenbaugh and Field 2013)

This concept is known as the “velocity of climate change,” and the map on the right shows two different estimates of how quickly species would have to shift in order to maintain the climates of their current habitats (assuming they needed to).

Schematic of the major warm (red to yellow) and cold (blue to purple) water pathways in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

…(read more)

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120
Food-Matters http://Food-Matters.TV

Arne Næss Chair – Centre for Development and the Environment

http://www.sum.uio.no/english/research/projects/arne-ness-chair/

Arne Næss Chair

The purpose of the Arne Næss Chair in Global Justice and the Environment is to honour international and native scholars who have created new insights into research on the questions of development, environment and global justice.

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120

Arne Naess Symposium, Oslo: Ecocide & Leadership – Eradicating Ecocide

http://eradicatingecocide.com/2013/10/11/arne-naess/

Arne Naess Symposium, Oslo: Ecocide & Leadership

It is my honour to be this year’s Arne Naess Professor, here in Olso, following in the footsteps of a great man who paved the way for me being here today. My contribution to Deep Ecology is my deep commitment to using my skills as a lawyer, my deep enquiry into how we can create laws that put people and planet first and my deep love of the Earth. There are too few of us who give our lives in service to something greater than the self, so many more are needed now than ever before to become Voices for the Earth. It is only by many more of us saying ‘Enough, this must end’ that the Ecocide will stop. And I for one shall continue until the job is done.

It is my commitment to you that a law of Ecocide shall become a crime. It’s now only a matter of time.

So what is Ecocide? Ecocide, as defined by me, is the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes. So there are two types of Ecocide; one, human-caused and the other non-human.Ecocide is a crime of consequence – no intent is required. This is because most Ecocide, especially corporate Ecocide, is not done with intent. What is intended is to create profit without being held to account for the consequences.

My time on the podium is short so I shall focus on just one Ecocide that has particular relevance to Norway: the Tar Sands in Canada which are probably the most hidden, yet most horrific example of Ecocide I have experienced. Early last year I received an email from a photographer friend working on an assignment for WWF who wrote to me about what he had experienced. These are his words:

“It is truly shocking up here. The environmental devastation is unbelievable. The local folk, at least the white guys seem to turn a blind eye to the damage. Maybe that’s because about 90% of the population of Fort McMurray are employed by the oil industry. A dump truck driver up here can earn $200,000 a year, so all they seem to be bothered about is the cash.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre130
Environmental Justice http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre145
Environment Ethics http://courses.dce.harvard.edu/~envre120