Nothing Less Than Fate of Planet Hinges on Next Supreme Court Nominee

Given the high environmental stakes, it’s not surprising that green groups are applying heavy scrutiny to potential replacements for Justice Antonin Scaliaby Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

The next U.S. Supreme Court justice could hold the fate of the planet in his or her hands, experts say. (Photo: Krissy Venosdale/flickr/cc)

As Washington, D.C. gears up for a Supreme Court showdown, experts this week are predicting that the person chosen to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the high court bench will have a huge impact on the fate of the planet.

Common Dreams previously reported that several high-profile cases hang in the balance in the wake of Scalia’s death. But perhaps none will be as closely watched as the case that pits fossil fuel giants and Republicans against environmentalists and the Obama administration.

“Any judge that sides with Big Oil over the American people has no place on our Supreme Court.”
—Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska

“In dying,” science journalist John Upton wrote on Sunday, “Scalia may have done more to support global climate action than most people will do in their lifetimes.”

That’s because, as Upton explained in a separate piece, Scalia’s death “means it is now more likely that key EPA rules that aim to curb climate pollution from the power industry will be upheld.”

And those rules—namely the Clean Power Plan (CPP), which aims to reduce carbon pollution from power plants—are necessary for the United States to deliver on the promises made at the COP21 climate summit in Paris in December. Without the CPP, Upton argued, “the U.S. would be left without a credible plan for fulfilling its pledge to reduce its climate pollution by a little more than a quarter in 2025 compared with 2005 levels.”

One of Scalia’s final acts as a Supreme Court justice was to vote in favor of an unprecedented stay on the CPP until it has been reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with arguments set for June 2.

The D.C. Circuit is likely to issue a decision on the Clean Power Plan this fall, which would put the rule back in front of the Supreme Court in spring 2017.

…(read more).

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Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections

Justin Wallis

Uploaded on Dec 22, 2010

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Uncount…

UNCOUNTED is an explosive new documentary that shows how the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 – and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election. This controversial feature length film by Emmy award-winning director David Earnhardt examines in factual, logical, and yet startling terms how easy it is to change election outcomes and undermine election integrity across the U.S. Noted computer programmers, statisticians, journalists, and experienced election officials provide the irrefutable proof.

UNCOUNTED shares well documented stories about the spine-chilling disregard for the right to vote in America. In Florida, computer programmer Clint Curtis is directed by his boss to create software that will “flip” votes from one candidate to another. In Utah, County Clerk Bruce Funk is locked out of his office for raising questions about security flaws in electronic voting machines. Californian Steve Heller gets convicted of a felony after he leaks secret documents detailing illegal activities committed by a major voting machine company. And Tennessee entrepreneur, Athan Gibbs, finds verifiable voting a hard sell in America and dies before his dream of honest elections can be realized.

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Free For All! – Documentary on the US election process

schatz87

Published on Feb 6, 2013

FREE FOR ALL! – One Dude’s Quest to Save Democracy! A documentary from 2008 by John Ennis uncovering misconducts and cheating in the US presidential elections.

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PAY 2 PLAY: Coingate & Campaign Calamities

Public Interest Pictures

Uploaded on Feb 1, 2011

http://pay2play.tv – From the forthcoming documentary PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes by John Wellington Ennis

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​Harvard’s Wall Street Problem | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

By William F. Morris IV, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

It must be tough being a Wall Street executive these days—private jets and holiday bonuses notwithstanding. The public can’t stand you, leading presidential figures on both the left and the right have sworn to take you down, and millions of Americans crowded in to see “The Big Short,” a movie that showed Main Street how Wall Street defrauded the world through reckless negligence and greed. It seems to me that the only thing that small town America hates more than the names Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are ISIS and Vladimir Putin.

Wall Street has an enormous impact on this campus as well. But our campus culture views it in a different light than the majority of Americans. Just last year, over a third of Harvard’s graduating seniors went on to jobs in finance or consulting. Students grind themselves into the dirt to make sure their resumes are in tip-top condition for select firms, some of which have hiring rates of as low as three percent. And it is a well-known fact that one of the perks of going here is that top companies send recruiters exclusively to Harvard and other peer institutions, skipping out on schools with less name recognition. Our house and club lists are constantly flooded with emails from recruiters, inviting us to recruitment fairs and letting us know about job opportunities…..

…(read more)

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Stockholm University commits to fossil free investments – Stockholm University

The Stockholm University Board decided at its meeting on 15 February 2016 that it no longer allows trust management investments in fossil fuels.

Vice-Chancellor Astrid Söderbergh Widding believes that it is an obvious choice not to invest in fossil fuels.

“Sustainable development is a key issue both in education and research at Stockholm University. As of one of very few environmentally certified institutions, we engage in environmental work in many areas. The decision to divest is a natural step in this work. Today, it is possible to make fossil free investments without compromising the overall objective of the trust management, i.e. to generate returns that can be used in education and research, says Astrid Söderbergh Widding.

“The transition to fossil-free investments begins immediately after today’s decision”, the Vice-Chancellor concludes.

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Climate Science as Culture War | Stanford Social Innovation Review

South Florida Earth First members protest outside the Platts Coal Properties and Investment Conference in West Palm Beach. (Photo by Bruce R. Bennett/Zum Press/Newscom)

The public debate around climate change is no longer about science—it’s about values, culture, and ideology.

By Andrew J. Hoffman Fall 2012

In May 2009, a development officer at the University of Michigan asked me to meet with a potential donor—a former football player and now successful businessman who had an interest in environmental issues and business, my interdisciplinary area of expertise. The meeting began at 7 a.m., and while I was still nursing my first cup of coffee, the potential donor began the conversation with “I think the scientific review process is corrupt.” I asked what he thought of a university based on that system, and he said that he thought that the university was then corrupt, too. He went on to describe the science of climate change as a hoax, using all the familiar lines of attack—sunspots and solar flares, the unscientific and politically flawed consensus model, and the environmental benefits of carbon dioxide.

As we debated each point, he turned his attack on me, asking why I hated capitalism and why I wanted to destroy the economy by teaching environmental issues in a business school. Eventually, he asked if I knew why Earth Day was on April 22. I sighed as he explained, “Because it is Karl Marx’s birthday.” (I suspect he meant to say Vladimir Lenin, whose birthday is April 22, also Earth Day. This linkage has been made by some on the far right who believe that Earth Day is a communist plot, even though Lenin never promoted environmentalism and communism does not have a strong environmental legacy.)

I turned to the development officer and asked, “What’s our agenda here this morning?” The donor interrupted to say that he wanted to buy me a ticket to the Heartland Institute’s Fourth Annual Conference on Climate Change, the leading climate skeptics conference. I checked my calendar and, citing prior commitments, politely declined. The meeting soon ended.

I spent the morning trying to make sense of the encounter. At first, all I could see was a bait and switch; the donor had no interest in funding research in business and the environment, but instead wanted to criticize the effort. I dismissed him as an irrational zealot, but the meeting lingered in my mind. The more I thought about it, the more I began to see that he was speaking from a coherent and consistent worldview—one I did not agree with, but which was a coherent viewpoint nonetheless. Plus, he had come to evangelize me. The more I thought about it, the more I became eager to learn about where he was coming from, where I was coming from, and why our two worldviews clashed so strongly in the present social debate over climate science. Ironically, in his desire to challenge my research, he stimulated a new research stream, one that fit perfectly with my broader research agenda on social, institutional, and cultural change.

Scientific vs. Social Consensus

Today, there is no doubt that a scientific consensus exists on the issue of climate change. Scientists have documented that anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases are leading to a buildup in the atmosphere, which leads to a general warming of the global climate and an alteration in the statistical distribution of localized weather patterns over long periods of time. This assessment is endorsed by a large body of scientific agencies—including every one of the national scientific agencies of the G8 + 5 countries—and by the vast majority of climatologists. The majority of research articles published in refereed scientific journals also support this scientific assessment. Both the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science use the word “consensus” when describing the state of climate science.

…(read more).

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Ancient Apocalypse Death on the Nile

English Video

Published on Apr 24, 2012

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Bronze Age collapse

archeo atlas

Published on Jan 3, 2014

The Influence of Climatic Change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Dark Ages

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