Markey: Preserve Net Neutrality & an Open Internet

E120, e145, e130

Ambassador Nathalie Cely’s Keynote at “Climate Change and the Cocoa Industry”

E120. E145, e130

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO): Climate Change Debate

LastWeekTonight

Published on May 11, 2014

John Oliver hosts a mathematically representative climate change debate, with the help of special guest Bill Nye the Science Guy, of course.

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

William Black: How to rob a bank (from the inside, that is)

TED

Published on May 12, 2014

William Black is a former bank regulator who’s seen firsthand how banking systems can be used to commit fraud — and how “liar’s loans” and other tricky tactics led to the 2008 US banking crisis that threatened the international economy. In this engaging talk, Black, now an academic, reveals the best way to rob a bank — from the inside.

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

Meet The Farmer: Best Of (Part 10)

freespeechtv

Published on May 12, 2014

Meet The Farmer: Best Of (Part 10)

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics
Food-Matters

Meet The Farmer: Best Of (Part 9)

freespeechtv

Published on May 12, 2014

Meet The Farmer: Best Of (Part 9)

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics
Food-Matters

Loss of Antarctic Glacier is Irreversible, NASA Scientists Say | Animation

VideoFromSpace

Published on May 12, 2014

After 40 years of observation, NASA and University of California researchers agree that melting of the West Antarctic Glacier has passed the point of no return. It contains enough ice to raise sea levels ~4 feet, but could take centuries to melt.

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

Thom Hartmann on Science and Green News: May 12, 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N-kSRSIAsY
thomhartmann

Published on May 12, 2014

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

Paul Krugman on the Coming Onslaught of Crazy Right-Wing Climate Economics—From Scalia, Rubio and Pals

AlterNet / By Janet Allon

Paul Krugman on the Coming Onslaught of Crazy Right-Wing Climate Economics—From Scalia, Rubio and Pals

Conspiracy theories will abound.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons   May 12, 2014 |

Paul Krugman took a look into his incredibly accurate crystal ball in today’s column and predicted that, now that the Obama Administration is intent on actually doing something about indisputable man-made climate change, conservatives will, of course, keep attacking science, but also call any attempt to regulate or address the problem a Marxist plot.

Because that’s just how they roll.

Krugman opens:

Everywhere you look these days, you see Marxism on the rise. Well, O.K., maybe you don’t — but conservatives do. If you so much as mention income inequality, you’ll be denounced as the second coming of Joseph Stalin; Rick Santorum has declared that any use of the word “class” is “ Marxism talk.” In the right’s eyes, sinister motives lurk everywhere — for example, George Will says the only reason progressives favor trains is their goal of “diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.”

So it goes without saying that Obamacare, based on ideas originally developed at the Heritage Foundation, is a Marxist scheme — why, requiring that people purchase insurance is practically the same as sending them to gulags.

And just wait until the Environmental Protection Agency announces rules intended to slow the pace of climate change.

We can’t wait. And, it turns out, we don’t need to.

We’ve already seen examples of the hysteria about regulation emanating from the right. In a recent case before the Supreme Court about power-plant pollution, the majority ruled that the E.P.A. does indeed have the right to regulate the poisonous smoke emanating from coal-fired power plants, because it crosses state lines. But, as Krugman points out, the reliably wrong right-wing nut-job justice dissented. “Justice Scalia didn’t just dissent,” Krugman writes, ” he suggested that the E.P.A.’s proposed rule — which would tie the size of required smog reductions to cost — reflected the Marxist concept of ‘from each according to his ability.’ Taking cost into consideration is Marxist? Who knew?”

….(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

Top Documentary Films: What Happened to Chernobyl After The Explosion

Top Documentary Films

Published on Apr 1, 2014

Top Documentary Films: What Happened to Chernobyl After The Explosion – Full Documentary

A little over an hour’s drive north (130km) of the city of Kiev is one of the most talked about places, and probably the most controversial tourist attraction in the Ukraine. Amidst an empty, stark, and abandoned landscape the site of Chernobyl sits here.Now that radiation levels have decreased to allow guided tours, you can safely venture forth from the comfort of your rented Kiev apartment or hotel in Kiev to follow in the steps of the many thousands of visitors from all over the world who have visited the site since it was deemed safe to reopen in 2002.

Protected by thick walls, the viewing area allows visitors clear sight of the doomed sarcophagus. This has become a form of modern icon a little like the Empire State building or Windsor Castle, due in the main to having being seen by millions of people as portrayed in newspapers/ magazines, or when the terrifying news of the explosion was reported worldwide by television crews.

20 years since reactor number 4 exploded, spending a few hours near Chernobyl is actually very safe. Much of the region records only slightly elevated levels of radiation – about 22 micro-roentgens, as opposed to the usual 14.

Around the actual reactor, the relative hot spots are diligently monitored on a regular basis, and have posed no risk to human life. National Health Protection agencies from the UK, Europe, and USA all now agree that visitors will receive no more radiation during a visit to Chernobyl than that experienced whilst travelling on a transatlantic flight! The one thing all visitors are told to avoid doing, however, is to avoid eating any food grown within the zone. Therefore, all tours supply lunch for their groups in the form of fresh food brought with them from Kiev.

Each guide carries a Geiger counter, and they are intimately aware of exactly where they can and cannot take their tour groups, plus everyone visiting is automatically screened for radiation levels before they leave the zone.

Close by is the town of Pripyat, once home to 47,000 nuclear workers and their families, and now an atomic-era Pompeii. Trees thrust through the empty shells of hotels, restaurants and bars, and the huge football stadium is stark and overgrown.

In the local school, classrooms lie with open books and the detritus of lives dramatically interrupted by evacuation – it reminds one of being aboard a large land-locked Maria Celeste.

There are still some people living in the exclusion zone. They number around 350, most of them elderly residents. Many were moved out to Kiev accommodation after the accident, but all missed their homes and decided en-mass to return. They live a normal life growing their vegetables, and are seemingly unperturbed by the radiation.

As you climb back into your tour bus ready to return to the warmth of your cosy Kiev apartment, the absolute guarantee has to be that your trip to Chernobyl will have been a truly unique and fascinating experience, one you can tell friends and family about for many years to come.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/saf…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernoby…
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/after-30-…
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/saf…

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics
Nuclear