Lets Have a Carbon Tax

freespeechtv

Published on May 23, 2014

Thom Hartmann talks with Senator Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator, who says it’s time for a carbon tax in the United States.

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The Case for Reparations

thomhartmann

Published on May 23, 2014

Thom Hartmann debates reparations with Mychal Massie, Conservative Commentator / Former Chairman-Project 21
Website: www.nationalcenter.org/P21Index.html

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Hearst and Bronstein: Obama’s War on Journalists

ForaTv

Published on May 23, 2014

Full video from FORA.tv Studios available at: http://fora.tv/2014/05/16/The_New_Wes…

William Hearst and Phil Bronstein discuss offensive measures taken by the Obama administration against whistleblowers and leakers, as well as journalists and their sources like Edward Snowden.

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Why solar technology cannot save us

PBS NewsHour

Published on May 23, 2014

PBS NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman hears from former big pharma executive Chris Martenson about how our economy requires unsustainable resources. But technology cannot make alternative sources of energy; it can only help us find them.

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Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition – Brave New Films

I hope you’re ready for a wild ride. Billionaires David and Charles Koch have been handed the ability to buy our democracy in the form of giant checks to the House, Senate, and soon, possibly even the Presidency. The last time we exposed the Koch Brothers’ dealings to the world we here at Brave New Films wound up in their crosshairs. They produced online ad campaigns attacking us, but, it takes more than a banner ad to slow us down.

We’ve reissued Koch Brothers Exposed in an updated version, Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition, to shine a light on them. We’ve delved even deeper into where their money is going, who their money is hurting, and how much they are making during this whole process leading up to the 2014 Elections.

Two years ago when we made this film very few people knew who the Koch Brothers were or what the Koch Brothers were doing. But now, we so strongly believe that everyone should know what is happening that with your help and donations we are able to offer the film for free. We want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to see the truth.

bravenewfilms

Published on May 19, 2014

The official trailer for Robert Greenwald’s new investigative documentary KOCH BROTHERS EXPOSED: 2014 EDITION
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You can sign up to view the film for free by following the link below:
http://www.bravenewfilms.org/koch2014

The film will premiere online on 5/20/14 and we will also ben screening several excerpts from the piece at an official Congressional Press Briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.

You will be able to stream the full film for free on our website as soon as the event is completed, and we will be hosting a live-stream of the briefing during the event. You can view the live-stream by following the link above.

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Koch Brothers Exposed

thomhartmann

Published on May 23, 2014

Thom Hartmann talks with Robert Greenwald, Founder / President-Brave New Films (BNF) Website: http://www.bravenewfilms.org about the updated edition of his movie. See:
http://kochbrothersexposed.com and http://www.bravenewfilms.org/koch2014

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‘A Government Of Thugs’: How Canada Treats Environmental Journalists | ThinkProgress

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/23/3428984/canada-war-on-environmentalists/

I attempted to enter Canada on a Tuesday, flying into the small airport at Fort McMurray, Alberta, waiting for my turn to pass through customs.

“What brings you to Fort Mac?” a Canada Border Services Agency official asked. “I’m a journalist,” I said. “I’m here to see the tar sands.” He pointed me to border security. Another official, a tall, clean-shaven man, asked the same question. “I’m here to see the tar sands.” he frowned. “You mean oil sands. We don’t have tar here.”

Up until the 1960s, the common name for Canada’s massive reserves of heavy bitumen mixed with sand was “tar sands.” Now, the phrase is officially considered a colloquialism, with “oil sands” being the accurate name, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. But “tar sands” is not really an informal phrase in Canada as much as it is a symbol of your views. If you say tar sands, you’re an environmentalist. If you say tar sands, you’re the enemy.

“We might have to send you back to the States,” the official said, after asking if I had working papers. I didn’t, so I phoned a colleague staying at a nearby hotel. “This guy at border security says I need working papers or something and that he’s gonna send me back to the States,” I said.

“Why did you say I was going to send you back to the States? I didn’t say that,” the official said after I hung up. “See, you’re already misrepresenting what’s going on here.”

My interrogation included details about where I was going, who I was meeting with, why I wanted to see the sands. The official had me open my bag so he could see if I was carrying cameras. Then he let me into Canada. “Because I’m being nice,” he said, and gave me a certificate stating that I must leave the country by Friday.

Can’t Criticize If You Don’t Know

In all, I was delayed for about 45 minutes — a relatively painless experience — but I did get the feeling I wasn’t the only one being hassled in Canada for an association with environmentalism. Indeed, as interviews with multiple reporters and activists show, the federal government places numerous obstacles in the way of those who try to disseminate information about the Canadian tar sands. Many believe this has amounted to a full-on war.

…(read more).

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Is Climate Change a Crime Against Humanity? | The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/article/179980/climate-change-crime-against-humanity

Think of climate change as a WMD on a particularly long fuse, already lit and there for any of us to see.

Tom Engelhardt
May 22, 2014

Eggborough Power Station in the UK (AP Photo/John Giles)

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.

Who could forget? At the time, in the fall of 2002, there was such a drumbeat of “information” from top figures in the Bush administration about the secret Iraqi program to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and so endanger the United States. And who—other than a few suckers—could have doubted that Saddam Hussein was eventually going to get a nuclear weapon? The only question, as our vice president suggested on “Meet the Press,” was: Would it take one year or five? And he wasn’t alone in his fears, since there was plenty of proof of what was going on. For starters, there were those “specially designed aluminum tubes” that the Iraqi autocrat had ordered as components for centrifuges to enrich uranium in his thriving nuclear weapons program. Reporters Judith Miller and Michael Gordon hit the front page of The New York Times with that story on September 8, 2002.

Then there were those “mushroom clouds” that Condoleezza Rice, our national security advisor, was so publicly worried about—the ones destined to rise over American cities if we didn’t do something to stop Saddam. As she fretted in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer on that same September 8th, “[W]e don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” No, indeed, and nor, it turned out, did Congress!

And just in case you weren’t anxious enough about the looming Iraqi threat, there were those unmanned aerial vehicles—Saddam’s drones!—that could be armed with chemical or biological WMD from his arsenal and flown over America’s East Coast cities with unimaginable results. President George W. Bush went on TV to talk about them and congressional votes were changed in favor of war thanks to hair-raising secret administration briefings about them on Capitol Hill.

…(read more).

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When Will Coastal Property Values Crash And Will Climate Science Deniers Be The Only Buyers? | ThinkProgress

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/23/2967411/coastal-property-values-crash-climate-science-deniers/

By Joe Romm on May 23, 2014 at 12:21 pm

“When Will Coastal Property Values Crash And Will Climate Science Deniers Be The Only Buyers?”

CREDIT: NY Times

The latest scientific observations provide strong evidence we are headed toward the high end of sea level projections. And we already knew that devastating storm surges will become routine on the East Coast.

This raises the question: What year will coastal property values crash?

I first posed the question five years ago. Back then we were getting a bunch of studies suggesting sea level rise in 2100 would be 3 to 6 feet. Since then the evidence for that has become even stronger.

Just this month, multiple studies found that both the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and Greenland are poised to continue their accelerating ice loss, with WAIS apparently now in a state of irreversible collapse. This in turn has led top climatologists and glaciologist to warn that we are headed toward the high end of sea level rise projections this century and beyond.

What does that mean for coastal property? As a National Geographic article on the subject last year put it:

In a state exposed to hurricanes as well as rising seas, people like John Van Leer, an oceanographer at the University of Miami, worry that one day they will no longer be able to insure — or sell — their houses. “If buyers can’t insure it, they can’t get a mortgage on it. And if they can’t get a mortgage, you can only sell to cash buyers,” Van Leer says. “What I’m looking for is a climate-change denier with a lot of money.”

South Florida will likely be ground zero for the coastal property collapse. As a 2013 Rolling Stone explained, the region suffers from “two big problems.” First, it has “remarkably flat topography. Half the area that surrounds Miami is less than five feet above sea level.”

So even with a mere three feet of sea-level rise, “more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone.” In short, half of southern Florida could be gone in a century. Jeff Goodell explained in Rolling Stone:

Even worse, South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. “Imagine Swiss cheese, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like,” says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily – it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below. “Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here,” says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas.

…(read more).

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House Votes To Deny Climate Science And Ties Pentagon’s Hands On Climate Change | ThinkProgress

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/22/3440827/mckinley-climate-pentagon-climate-change/

By Ryan Koronowski on May 22, 2014 at 6:24 pm

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“House Votes To Deny Climate Science And Ties Pentagon’s Hands On Climate Change”

CREDIT: Shutterstock.com

Sea level rise impacting naval bases. Climate change altering natural disaster response. Drought influenced by climate change in the Middle East and Africa leading to conflicts over food and water — as in, for instance, Syria.

The military understands the realities of climate change and the negative impacts of heavy dependence on fossil fuels.

The U.S. House does not.

With a mostly party-line vote on Thursday, the House of Representatives passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) that seeks to prevent the Department of Defense from using funding to address the national security impacts of climate change.

“You can’t change facts by ignoring them,” said Mike Breen, Executive Director of the Truman National Security Project, and leader of the clean energy campaign, Operation Free. “This is like trying to lose 20 pounds by smashing your bathroom scale.”

The full text of McKinley’s amendment reads:

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to implement the U.S. Global Change Research Program National Climate Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, the United Nation’s Agenda 21 sustainable development plan, or the May 2013 Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order

In other words, the House just tried to write climate denial into the Defense Department’s budget. “The McKinley amendment would require the Defense Department to assume that the cost of carbon pollution is zero,” Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bobby Rush (D-IL) said in a letter to their colleagues before the vote. “That’s science denial at its worst and it fails our moral obligation to our children and grandchildren.”

…(read more).

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