Leaked Heartland Institute Emails: Inside the Climate Denier Right Wing Think Tank

Sam Seder

Uploaded on Feb 23, 2012

From the Majority Report, live M-F 11:30am EST and via daily podcast at http://Majority.FM:
Leaked emails from the Heartland Institute, a climate change denier right wing think tank, has uncovered some interesting information…

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Meet the ‘climate realists’: The Heartland Institute comes to Paris

Climate Home

Published on Jan 8, 2016

Climate Home goes along to the Hotel California, where the world’s leading sceptic think tank on man-made climate change is holding an event to ‘examine the data’.
It comes as 195 countries work to strike a new global warming pact on Paris’ margins.

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Sherry Turkle: Reclaiming Conversation

The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Published on Jan 8, 2016

Once a believer and now a skeptic, Sherry Turkle sees digital technology as “implicated in an assault on empathy that touches every aspect of our lives.” The author of “Reclaiming Conversation” joins The Agenda to discuss why she believes sacrificing conversation for digital connection is not worth it.

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Is Aliso Canyon California’s BP Blowout?

thomhartmann

Published on Jan 8, 2016

Thom Hartmann talks with Congressman Brad Sherman, Democratic Congressman, 30th District, California
Website: https://sherman.house.gov/, about the massive natural gas leak in Porter Ranch, California.

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State of Emergency in California over toxic gas leak

Al Jazeera English

Published on Jan 8, 2016

The governor of the US state of California has declared a state of emergency following a natural gas leak in Los Angeles. More than two thousand families have already left their homes. Experts say it could be weeks before the leak is contained. Al Jazeera’s Andy Gallacher reports.

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Chamber of Commerce throws support behind TPP

RT America

Published on Jan 8, 2016

The US Chamber of Commerce has thrown its support behind the controversial and secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the 12-nation trade deal which could regulate the international trade for food, pharmaceuticals and intellectual property. RT’s Lindsay France examines the lobbying group’s decision to support the controversial deal.

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People are still being misled about Keystone pipeline – activist

RT America

Published on Jan 8, 2016

The company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline, TransCanada, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the federal government for what they claim to be the “politically-driven denial of Keystone’s application.” RT’s Ashlee Banks speaks with Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska about TransCanada’s attempt to sue the US government and take millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

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How #BlackLivesMatter is Transforming the Climate Change Debate

FORA.tv

Published on Jan 8, 2016

NAACP’s Jacqui Patterson and Millennial Action Project’s Steven Olikara look at how the next generation of climate activists responded to COP21 in Paris.

Watch the full interview: http://f4a.tv/1JcDLLy

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Keystone Lawsuit Illustrates Enviros’ Big Problem With TPP

President Barack Obama listens to US Trade Representative Michael Froman (L) as Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and US Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez look on during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House December 16, 2013. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Canadian company behind the Keystone Pipeline is suing the US government. It’s a perfect example of why many environmentalists are wary of Obama’s secretive trade deals.

By John Light | January 8, 2016
On Wednesday, TransCanada, the Canadian fossil fuel company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline, announced that it is suing the Obama administration under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The case will be decided by an international tribunal. The corporation also filed a separate suit at the US Federal Court in Dallas.

“TransCanada has been unjustly deprived of the value of its multi-billion-dollar investment by the U.S. Administration’s action,” the company said in a press release, declaring that it hopes to recover $15 billion in US taxpayer money as compensation for lost profits. (The federal court suit, the company explained, “does not seek damages, but rather a declaration that the [administration’s] permit denial is without legal merit and that no further Presidential action is required before construction of the pipeline can proceed.”)

The NAFTA suit takes advantage of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), a way corporations can sue foreign governments for damages that’s a feature of many trade agreements — and which many environmental groups staunchly oppose.

 

ISDS filings increased over the last two decades. (From “Recent Trends in Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” by Rachel Wellhausen)

ISDS was an idea conjured up by European investors in the mid-20th century, when companies worried that revolutionary governments would nationalize an investment, like a coal mine. They wanted a way to hold governments accountable for their losses. But in the last two decades, as the number of trade deals containing ISDS has increased, suits have been put to a broader use, with companies alleging lost profits and suing not just when a government seizes a company’s property but also when a government changes regulations in a way that seems to target one company.

In large part because of ISDS, groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have become outspoken opponents of Obama’s current deal with Pacific Rim countries — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — and another trade agreement with European countries that is still being negotiated, the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The environmentalists argue that while the administration is pursuing agreements with countries like China and India to cut emissions, and backing action through the UN Paris climate pact, it simultaneously is pushing new trade deals that, like NAFTA, would allow foreign fossil-fuel companies to sue to protect their interests and keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

…(read more).

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‘Case is made’ for Earth’s new Anthropocene Epoch – BBC News

An international scientific panel believes that the Earth has entered a new geological age.

The team, which has been tasked with defining the so-called Anthropocene, says humanity’s impacts on Earth will be visible in sediments and rocks millions of years into the future.

The researchers are working towards a formal classification of the new epoch.

Stephen Sackur explains.

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