More Attorneys General Back ExxonMobil Climate Change Probe

March 30, 2016 Headlines

A coalition of attorneys general have announced a historic effort to investigate corporations that may have misled the public about climate change. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, flanked by former Vice President Al Gore and multiple other attorneys general, said her office would join efforts by attorneys general in New York and California to investigate ExxonMobil.

Attorney General Maura Healey: “It appears, certainly, that certain companies, certain industries may not have told the whole story, leading many to doubt whether climate change is real and to misunderstand and misapprehend the catastrophic nature of its impacts. Fossil fuel companies that deceived investors and consumers about the dangers of climate change should be, must be held accountable. That’s why I, too, have joined in investigating the practices of ExxonMobil. We can all see today the troubling disconnect between what Exxon knew, what industry folks knew and what the company and industry chose to share with investors and with the American public.”

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice
Media

What’s Missing From The Debates: ISIS, War Profiteering, and Hillary’s Failure in Libya

The Laura Flanders Show

Published on Mar 30, 2016

Middle East expert Phyllis Bennis tells us why we need more discussion of war and peace in the race for the White House.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Big Media Has Been Waiting For Trump Since 1987

The Big Picture RT

Published on Mar 30, 2016

The media didn’t create Trump – but he’s exactly the candidate they’ve been waiting for since 1987. t’s time for the mainstream media to start acting in the public interest – instead of their corporate interests.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice
Media

How Fox Brainwashed My Dad

The Big Picture RT

Published on Mar 30, 2016

Filmmaker Jen Senko joins Thom. If you’ve ever wondered how your father – uncle – brother – or cousin – got hooked on watching Fox so-called News and suddenly became a parrot of Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelley – you’re not alone. There’s been numerous books written about the Faux News phenomena and how the network became the second most watched network in America – second only to ESPN. But now there’s a new 90 minute documentary directed by Jen Senko called “The Brainwashing of My Dad” that explains how a “Kennedy Democrat” became a right-wing hate parrot thanks to his daily commute.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice
Media

Wages ‘flat or declining’ since NAFTA – Union boss

RT America

Published on Mar 30, 2016

Wall Street-driven companies continue to chase cheap labor around the world, the latest example being the relocation of a Carrier air-conditioning plant to Mexico. For more on outsourcing and trade deals, United Steelworkers International President Leo Gerard, joins ‘News With Ed.’

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

World would likely need geoengineering to meet Paris targets, but what are the risks? | Olivia Boyd – China Dialogue

(Image by NASA)

Olivia Boyd
28.03.2016

Capping global average temperatures at 1.5C or 2C might only be done by using untested geoengineering technologies, writes Olivia Boyd

Geoengineering may have to move from the fringes of the climate debate towards the mainstream if the world is to meet the climate targets included in the Paris Climate Agreement, say some policy analysts and scientists.

At the rate that the world is burning coal, gas and oil, even rapid adoption of low carbon technologies might not keep warming within 1.5C, while the 2C target, also included in the agreement, looks even further out of reach.

But geoengineering is dangerous stuff – it involves countering climate change by manipulating the planet’s weather without being able to guarantee or calibrate the outcomes. Even leading researchers who spend their lives working on the concept acknowledge that these technologies could have huge unintended, and harmful, consequences.

The idea is simple: humans can directly and dramatically intervene in the earth’s climate system, by reflecting the sun’s rays back into space or sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Proposed techniques include spraying sun-reflecting aerosols into the stratosphere, or brightening clouds to increase their ability to cool the Earth’s climate. Another idea is to drop iron filings into the oceans that would alter ecosystems and sponge up carbon dioxide, storing it in the depth of the ocean.

For geoengineering to work effectively – assuming that the science actually works – it would require strong and highly adaptive international institutions to manage these solutions for evermore.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

University of Miami and climate

In 2007 President Donna E. Shalala signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. This historical event sent a strong and unequivocal message about University of Miami’s dedication to sustainability. As part of this commitment, a Climate Action Plan was designed in 2009 (download here). The University of Miami, since then, has taken steps towards carbon neutrality and has engaged in the path of Greenhouse Gas emissions reduction.

The University of Miami’s 2014 Sustainability Interim Report follows the steps of our first Climate Action Plan. This report intends to give a snapshot of the State of Green Initiatives and achievements at UM, specifically for the campus of Coral Gables and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. It is a part of the roadmap that the University follows in its journey towards carbon neutrality. In order to fulfill long-term goals of greenhouse gas emission reductions, UM has committed to various programs, projects and policies that will be outlined in this document. Future scenarios and strategic planning for emission reductions will be the object of a separate and more comprehensive Sustainability Action Plan that we are expecting to release in 2016

…(read more)

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Acceleration of Slow Food: Reflections on the First 30 Years

Ellen Messer
Tufts University

Carlo Petrini’s Food & Freedom. How the Slow Food Movement is Changing the World Through Gastronomy (John Irving, trans. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2015).

This is an insightful and engaging read (with some redundancies near the end), which describes the chronology of Slow Food as a social movement and related institutional dimensions. The chronology, clear outline of conceptual and organizational issues, numerous illustrative national and community case studies, and linkages to other food movements (agricultural and environmental sustainability, right-to-food, anti-hunger, anti-globalization and anti-free trade) makes it a valuable addition to any food-policy or sustainable food systems syllabus or professional background readings.

In this lyrically written and adequately-referenced volume, Petrini constructs chronologies and links local, sustainable, and fair food movements in new ways. He is particularly sharp when critiquing the “wasteconomy”, his overarching term for conventional, globalizing food systems and commodification processes that judge food only by price without considering other (labor, environmental, biodiversity) characteristics and more humane, “right to food” dimensions of value: “It is incredible how a system designed to reduce diversity, increase productivity, and distribute efficiently from centralized structures manages to “lose food” at every turn…all this while a billion people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition” (p.89). His opening historical chapters remind the reader that the origins of the Slow Food movement, in 1986, coincided with and were motivated by three Italian-area environmental and food-system disasters that wreaked havoc on small farmers and their local products: (1) the case of the adulteration of Italian Piedmont wine with methanol that killed 23 and blinded many others; (2) the Chernobyl disaster, which raised the dangers of radioactive pollution in neighboring regions, and (3) multiple cases of atrazine (pesticide) poisoning in the Italian Po Valley. All raised questions about safety of farmers, consumers, and food systems, and the need for more reliable, “good, clean, fair” food chains that would make it uneconomic to engage in scandalous food-system activities.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Vaclav Smil – Drivers of environmental change: focus on energy transitions

UBC

Uploaded on Jun 25, 2011

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by St. John’s College. Vaclav Smil is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He completed his graduate studies at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Carolinum University in Prague and at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies, and he had also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy) and the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He has been an invited speaker in more than 250 conferences and workshops in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa, has lectured at many universities in North America, Europe and East Asia and has worked as a consultant for many US, EU and international institutions.

Global Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Environment Ethics

AgroParisTech

Founded on January 1st 2007 by the three following Graduate Institutes in Science and Engineering:

INA P-G – Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon
ENGREF – Ecole Nationale du Génie Rural, des Eaux et des Forêts
ENSIA – Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Industries Agricoles et Alimentaires

AgroParisTech is a member of ParisTech , the Paris Institute of Technology, which is a consortium of 10 of the foremost French Graduate Institutes in Science and Engineering.

AgroParisTech is a core member of the Paris cluster in Life and Environmental Science and Technology, together with 2 Graduate schools (Alfort National Veterinary School and Versailles National School of Landscape architecture) and 3 research centers (INRA, Cemagref and AFSSA).

AgroParisTech is organized into 5 departments:

• Agronomy, Forestry, Water and Environmental Science and Technology ;
• Life Science and Health ;
• Science and Engineering for Food and Bioproducts ;
• Social science, Economics and Management ;
• Modeling: Mathematics, Informatics and Physics.

The key facts are :

2,000 students,
450 Ph.D. students,
230 academic staff,
39 research laboratories,
300 researchers and
9 campuses (4 in Paris and the greater Paris area)

…(read more)

Food-Matters
Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice