side note: For the past 2 years, we have been buying our pork from a local farmer, who is related to a good friend, this farmer raises only a small number of cows and pigs, but does it on small scale and really focuses on the conditions of his animals. Let me just say that I’ve never eaten pork so tasty….I know it sound hard to believe, but I can now tell the difference between quality and the shit that factory farms produce. This year, we decided that we’d buy beef from that farmer as well……we’ve just started consuming it, but god damn, it’s tasty as well!!!! With the obesity problems in this country…we need to start educating people on where their food comes from. Once again, the corporate culture of factory farms have invaded DC, and our politicians care more about their relection chests then their constituents!

HuffingtonPost.com
Nicolette Hahn Niman
Livestock Rancher, Lawyer, and Author, Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms

Most people share at least the following traits: they want to be healthy; they like animals; and they value clean air and water. Yet relatively few Americans connect those concerns with their food. As more people start making the link (especially if they’ve seen graphic video footage of industrial animal operations), many decide it’s time to stop eating foods from factory farms. This is a guide for doing just that.

I’ve been a vegetarian for more than twenty years. Unlike the fits and starts described in Jonathan Safran Foer’s autobiographical book Eating Animals, the day I decided to quit eating meat was the last time I ever did. I remember that dinner well. It was my mother’s tuna fish casserole, and actually quite tasty. But while I chose to stop eating meat, I never adopted the view that it was morally wrong, and, consequently, didn’t become one of those vegetarians who spends her spare time plumbing the depths of meat industry literature looking for bits of information to shock my friends and family into giving up meat.

Nine years ago, I had just started working as an environmental lawyer for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. when he approached me about leading a national campaign to reform the livestock and poultry sector. He said that industrialized animal production had become one of the nation’s worst polluters of water and air, and he wanted to aggressively attack the problem.

Initially, realizing that Bobby was asking me to work full-time on poop, I hesitated. It was not the glamorous job I’d envisioned when moving to New York to work for him. But then I visited towns in Missouri and North Carolina that had been overrun by factory-style production of hogs, chickens and turkeys. I witnessed biblical-scale plagues of pollution and stench; I spoke with people whose lives had been ruined when an industrial hog or poultry operation was erected next door; and I heard the details of how the animals were raised. My reticence vanished and I jumped at the chance to work on cleansing the earth of the animal factory menace.

I loved the job and threw myself into it, body and soul. But there was one problem: I could no longer deny the shady past of my own food. Every day, I was putting stuff into my mouth that undeniably came from factory farms. I was a vegetarian, yes, but consumed plenty of eggs, milk, yogurt, butter and cheese. And much of the factory farm data and stories I was gathering from all over the country was about egg and dairy operations. My unease grew with each passing day.

To avoid the products of factory farms, I became something of a food detective. My groceries were the subjects of my investigations. Where were they coming from and how they were produced? I roamed grocery store aisles carefully reading product labels, but there was little to no information about the conditions in which the animals were raised. I wrote letters to food companies with questions about what they fed their animals, but the letters went unanswered. The food system’s lack of transparency was frustrating. Eventually, I mostly gave up on supermarkets and began exploring new ways to get at the good food I was seeking. Although the task was daunting, my goal was simple: I wanted all my food to come from places I would enjoy visiting. (more…)

side note: Even after Katrina…..this country will not get on board with changing the way we view climate change. Granted, the ignorant and dumb in this country have had the microphone for too fuckin long…..and the rest of us, who live in reality, want it back so we can get create some real reform!

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you’ve been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we’re hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it.

And here’s the thing: I’m not engaging in hyperbole. These days, dire warnings aren’t the delusional raving of cranks. They’re what come out of the most widely respected climate models, devised by the leading researchers. The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in just the last few years.

What’s driving this new pessimism? Partly it’s the fact that some predicted changes, like a decline in Arctic Sea ice, are happening much faster than expected. Partly it’s growing evidence that feedback loops amplifying the effects of man-made greenhouse gas emissions are stronger than previously realized. For example, it has long been understood that global warming will cause the tundra to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide, which will cause even more warming, but new research shows far more carbon dioxide locked in the permafrost than previously thought, which means a much bigger feedback effect.

The result of all this is that climate scientists have, en masse, become Cassandras — gifted with the ability to prophesy future disasters, but cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them.

And we’re not just talking about disasters in the distant future, either. The really big rise in global temperature probably won’t take place until the second half of this century, but there will be plenty of damage long before then. (more…)

side note: I think the problem is not that people don’t believe in Global Warming, well, there actually are some nutjobs that believe that…….but I think most people don’t want to actually make the daily changes in their lives that would be necessary to make the real changes. This is why obesity is such an issue in our country….most people know that eating a diet of mcdonalds and big gulps isn’t healthy….but they still do it!

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

So, have you enjoyed the debate over health care reform? Have you been impressed by the civility of the discussion and the intellectual honesty of reform opponents?

If so, you’ll love the next big debate: the fight over climate change.

The House has already passed a fairly strong cap-and-trade climate bill, the Waxman-Markey act, which if it becomes law would eventually lead to sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But on climate change, as on health care, the sticking point will be the Senate. And the usual suspects are doing their best to prevent action.

Some of them still claim that there’s no such thing as global warming, or at least that the evidence isn’t yet conclusive. But that argument is wearing thin — as thin as the Arctic pack ice, which has now diminished to the point that shipping companies are opening up new routes through the formerly impassable seas north of Siberia.

Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers: earlier this week Pacific Gas and Electric canceled its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the chamber’s “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality” of climate change.

So the main argument against climate action probably won’t be the claim that global warming is a myth. It will, instead, be the argument that doing anything to limit global warming would destroy the economy. As the blog Climate Progress puts it, opponents of climate change legislation “keep raising their estimated cost of the clean energy and global warming pollution reduction programs like some out of control auctioneer.”

It’s important, then, to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial. Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either.

How do we know this? First, the evidence suggests that we’re wasting a lot of energy right now. That is, we’re burning large amounts of coal, oil and gas in ways that don’t actually enhance our standard of living — a phenomenon known in the research literature as the “energy-efficiency gap.” The existence of this gap suggests that policies promoting energy conservation could, up to a point, actually make consumers richer. (more…)

side note: Well…it should be interesting to see if the US can convince China to do anything in the near future in regards to its emissions. It’s hard to blame their reaction when the big player, us, had a monkey in the White House thinking God was having a campfire, and that was causing the rise in the Earth’s temperature.

By PAUL KRUGMAN
TAIPEI, Taiwan
New York Times

I have seen the future, and it won’t work.

These should be hopeful times for environmentalists. Junk science no longer rules in Washington. President Obama has spoken forcefully about the need to take action on climate change; the people I talk to are increasingly optimistic that Congress will soon establish a cap-and-trade system that limits emissions of greenhouse gases, with the limits growing steadily tighter over time. And once America acts, we can expect much of the world to follow our lead.

But that still leaves the problem of China, where I have been for most of the last week.

Like every visitor to China, I was awed by the scale of the country’s development. Even the annoying aspects — much of my time was spent viewing the Great Wall of Traffic — are byproducts of the nation’s economic success.

But China cannot continue along its current path because the planet can’t handle the strain.

The scientific consensus on prospects for global warming has become much more pessimistic over the last few years. Indeed, the latest projections from reputable climate scientists border on the apocalyptic. Why? Because the rate at which greenhouse gas emissions are rising is matching or exceeding the worst-case scenarios.

And the growth of emissions from China — already the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide — is one main reason for this new pessimism. (more…)

side note: Mike Pence is such a tool….just took a brief look at the district that Pence is in….the 94% white, 6th district of Indiana. I’m thinking that a majority of the votes Obama got in November DID NOT come from that area…especially knowing they keep re-electing this bible thumper!

side note: I love articles that can make you completely look at what you consider to be a rock-solid view of a subject and turn it up on its head! I think I agree with almost everything Dubro says on efficient cars. The only problem is do we have a real solution to this problem? I have yet to see one that seems likely to work…..

By Alec Dubro
Progressive.org

Let’s get something straight about green industry: in its basic form it means we all have to buy new stuff … lots of it. As an industrial policy that will create jobs and increase spending, it’s pretty sound. As an environmental policy, it’s largely a fraud.

Nowhere is it more disingenuous than the pursuit of the fuel-efficient car. In their effort to stave off collapse of their industry, auto executives have continually cited their efforts are building the high-efficiency cars of the future. The problem is, there are no cars of the future, and the looming catastrophe of global pollution, including climate change, will never be solved by building more cars – efficient or otherwise.

We’d desperately like to believe that there is a way to preserve our car-centered civilization, while simultaneously placating the gods of atmospheric warming. Even the president-elect believes it, and Obama made fuel-efficient cars a central part of his energy policy. He promised a $7,000 tax credit to hybrid car buyers, aiming for a million plug-in hybrids, getting 150 mpg, by 2015. He wants to put an additional million completely plug-in vehicles by the same year. And he’s willing to federal funds up for research, or at least he was before we lost all our money.

Even on its face, this seems like a tepid response to climate change. At the moment there are upward of 250,000,000 registered vehicles in the United States – more than there are licensed drivers. Converting one percent or so of them to greater fuel efficiency is not likely to do very much in the time needed to act. Nevertheless, the hope is that introduction of a new generation of electric and semi-electric will eventually lead to a replacement of our entire fleet of gas-guzzlers. Maybe. But the bigger problem is that increasing fuel efficiency has never led to an overall reduction in pollutants. In fact, efficiency has always led to more production and consumption. (more…)

side note: I became more depressed as I read this……..this falls in line with the open letter to Bush by William Rivers Pitt that was post a few days back. We can’t forget what dubya did to this country…..we can’t let this happen again! I think people now see the damage that can be done by a bad President!

By Vincent Rossmeier and Gabriel Winant
Salon.com
President Bush inherited a peaceful, prosperous America. As he exits, Salon consults experts in seven fields to try to assess the devastation

After a couple of presidential terms, mismanagement in every area of policy — foreign, domestic, even extraterrestrial — starts to add up. When George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he inherited peace and prosperity. The military, the Constitution and New Orleans were intact and the country had a budget surplus of $128 billion. Now he’s about to dash out the door, leaving a large, unpaid bill for his successors to pay.

To get a sense of what kind of balance is due, Salon spoke to experts in seven different fields. Wherever possible, we have tried to express the damage done in concrete terms — sometimes in lives lost, but most often just in money spent and dollars owed. What follows is an incomplete inventory of eight years of mis- and malfeasance, but then a fuller accounting would run, um, somewhat longer than three pages.

THE ECONOMY

Until not too long ago, President Bush’s supporters could be heard to argue that the economy was the unheralded success story of his administration. In 2006, Larry Kudlow called it “The Greatest Story Never Told.” While praising Bush, Ramesh Ponnuru decried the unfairness of it all. “It seems to happen every week: Some new piece of good economic news comes out, and Republicans sink a little deeper in the polls.” To share their admiration, it helped if you ignored the way the wealth was being distributed. Or if you were a repo man.

But the whole debate became moot on Sept. 15, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Now the economy may be the most burdensome of all the Bush legacies that Barack Obama will have to shoulder.

The current financial and economic crisis has grown so massive, consuming everything in sight, that one might be able to forget that it started with bad mortgages. Well, one could try to forget, as long as one still has a home, or is not among the nearly one in four mortgage-holders whose homes are worth less than the debt on their homes.

How bad is it? “An average recession is one in which we lose about 3 percent of GDP. Three percent of GDP is about $500 billion,” UCLA economist Lee Ohanian told Salon. “It’s not inconceivable that this could be twice as worse, which would be close to a trillion.”

How much poorer are we going to get before we start getting richer again? Here are some (scary, morbid, gruesome) clues.

Expected shortfall of gross domestic product below normal growth path in 2009: $900 billion (more…)

side note: It’s nice to the see the adults back in charge!

by: Deborah Charles
Reuters

Chicago – President-elect Barack Obama’s team to address climate change emerged on Wednesday as Democratic officials said he had chosen a Nobel laureate for U.S. energy secretary and was likely to pick an environmental veteran to serve as coordinator of climate policies.

Rounding out his cabinet, Obama planned to announce at a Chicago news conference on Thursday that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, would lead efforts to improve the U.S. health care system as the secretary of Health and Human Services.

Simmering in the background is the scandal involving Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was arrested on Tuesday and charged with attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat that Obama had held until he was elected president on November 4.

Obama on Wednesday called on Blagojevich to resign and has sought to distance himself from the disgraced governor.

Announcements to come in the days ahead include several key environment-related appointments — Steven Chu as energy secretary, Carol Browner as energy and climate coordinator, Nancy Sutley to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Lisa Jackson to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

They will be charged with developing policies to reduce carbon emissions blamed for global warming, develop new sources of energy and create new jobs — a top priority for Obama.

Chu is director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics. He was an early advocate for scientific solutions to climate change.

Browner was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration. A principal at global strategy firm The Albright Group LLC, she heads Obama’s advisory team on energy and the environment. (more…)

Neil Young
huffingtonpost.com

Find a new ownership group. The culture must change. It is time to turn the page. In the high technology sector there are several candidates for ownership of a major car and truck manufacturer. We need forward looking people who are not restricted by the existing culture in Detroit. We need visionary people now with business sense to create automobiles that do not contribute to global warming.

It is time to change and our problems can facilitate our solutions. We can no longer afford to continue down Detroit’s old road. The people have spoken. They do not want gas guzzlers (although they still like big cars and trucks). It is possible to build large long-range vehicles that are very efficient. People will buy those vehicles because they represent real change and a solution that we can live with.

The government must take advantage of the powerful position that exists today. The Big 3 are looking for a bailout. They should only get it if they agree to stop building autos that contribute to global warming now. The stress on the auto manufacturers today is gigantic. In order to keep people working in their jobs and keep factories open, this plan is suggested: (more…)

side note: Everytime I see a Barack rally, the motto “Change” is everywhere. I’m thinking this should mean more then what we always think of……getting rid of the dubya/cheney policies that McCain would continue! We need to start making the right choices in this country. Zakaria makes some great points, I think everyone should read this and find out what we all need to do to start righting the ship. Something that I think he leaves out is the fact that we do not eat healthy in this country, and we are not as active as we once were. The TV, computers, video games and a host of others have led to this……we will have to readjust our lives to make this happen. Of course, as I type this, I’m sitting on my couch watching hour 3 of my 12 hour football Sunday……..we all need to make a change.

Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
The crisis has forced the United States to confront bad habits developed over the past few decades. If we can kick those habits, today’s pain will translate into gains.

Some of us—especially those under 60—have always wondered what it would be like to live through the kind of epochal event one reads about in books. Well, this is it. We’re now living history, suffering one of the greatest financial panics of all time. It compares with the big ones—1907, 1929—and we cannot yet know its full consequences for the financial system, the economy or society as a whole.

I’m betting that, in the end, the world’s governments will win this battle against fear. They have potentially unlimited tools at their disposal, especially if they act in concert. They can nationalize firms, call bank holidays, suspend trading for weeks, buy up debt and equity, and renegotiate home mortgages. Most important, the American government can print money. All of these tools have long-term effects that are extremely troublesome, but they are nothing compared with the potential collapse of the financial system. And Washington seems to have recognized that it must do whatever is required to shore up that system. Big questions remain. What will it take to stop the fall? How costly will it be? How long before the rescue plan starts to have an effect? But at some point, the panic that gripped world markets last week will end. Of course, that will not mean a return to growth or a bull market. We’re in for tough times. But it will mean a return to sanity.

Amid all the difficulties and hardship that we are about to undergo, I see one silver lining. This crisis has—dramatically, vengefully—forced the United States to confront the bad habits it has developed over the past few decades. If we can kick those habits, today’s pain will translate into gains in the long run.

Since the 1980s, Americans have consumed more than they produced—and they have made up the difference by borrowing. (more…)

side note: Just like her politics, Sarah Palin loves an unfair hunt.

by: Peter N. Spotts, The Christian Science Monitor

You never know what you’ll find until you dig a little deeper. Scientists taking the measure of how much carbon the Arctic locks up beneath its tundra have done just that. Based on what they’ve found, they estimate that the Arctic could harbor an average of 60 percent more carbon than previous estimates have indicated.

Researchers are interested in the Arctic’s carbon budget because projections of global warming suggest that the region’s average temperature could warm by as much as 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, depending on the trajectory that emissions from human activities take. The concern: As the Arctic continues to warm and the permafrost thaws, significant amounts of carbon will find their way into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide or methane. These added greenhouse gases would serve to reinforce global warming.

The results come from a group led by University of Alaska at Fairbanks soil scientist Chien-lu Ping and published in today’s edition of Nature Geoscience. Hints that the Arctic’s tundra may lock up more carbon than older, widely cited estimates had indicated date back at least to 2005. For instance, a team led by Jeffery Welker at the University of Alaska at Anchorage reported at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that in Greenland, it was finding between nine and 125 times the amount of carbon previously reported, depending on the type of Arctic landscape yielding the measurements. (more…)

side note: This was just suggested at my place of employment. There were some good points made for both sides, but I am in favor of working longer days to get a chance to snag a longer weekend. Would be nice to be productive on the weekend and still have a day or 2 to relax and unwind. Plus, the energy savings would be huge for everyone, both company and employee!

MedHeadlines.com

Calling it a Compressed Working Week, British researchers are suggesting a shorter work week may improve the detrimental health effects of shift work at the same time it improves employee morale and boosts productivity. Twenty percent of all European workers are involved with shift work in one form or another, usually working five 8-hour days. The research team says both the employee and the employer may benefit from three or four 12-hour days instead.

Reporting in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the research team identifies digestive problems, fatigue, sleep difficulties, and stress-induced illness as common complaints from shift workers. They are also prone to miss work due to illness more often than those who work during standard business hours.
The research team reviewed 40 studies previously conducted that explore the work-life balance of shift work, including the health effects of a shift-working lifestyle. Using self-reported feedback from workers trying the Compressed Working Week theory, the research team says there appears to be no detrimental effects on worker health when working the shorter week. The study also reveals a lowered risk of adverse effects to health or organizational issues when the work week is compressed. No evidence of diminished productivity or loss of competitive edge was discovered. (more…)

side note: I don’t mind Barack trying to arrive at a compromise with the other side of the aisle……but when all the facts don’t add up for the other side, then what the fuck is he thinking? In yesterday’s New York Times: “the U.S. government’s own Energy Information Administration says that removing restrictions on offshore drilling wouldn’t lead to any additional domestic oil production until 2017, and that even at its peak the extra production would have an “insignificant” impact on oil prices.” Come on Barack, this is bullshit, you don’t have to go to the center on this issue. It’ll be interesting if the money starts flowing in from oil companies.

By Kim Chipman
Bloomberg

Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) — Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said he’s willing to support an expansion of offshore oil drilling that’s part of an $84 billion Senate plan aimed at increasing domestic energy production.

Obama, who has opposed more drilling off the nation’s coastlines, said that while he “remains skeptical” about the idea, he would compromise because the proposal offers a “careful and responsible” drilling agenda. It also calls for other measures to wean the country off its dependence on imported oil.

“What I don’t want to do is for the best to be the enemy of the good,” Obama, a senator from Illinois, said at a news conference today in Cape Canaveral, Florida. “If we can come up with a general bipartisan compromise in which I have to accept some things I don’t like, then that’s something I’m open to.”

Along with the drilling provision, the preliminary plan offers incentives for cleaner cars and electricity.

The measure, announced yesterday by five Republican and five Democratic senators, would allow Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to open waters beyond 50 miles (80 kilometers) to drilling. It would repeal tax breaks for oil companies and devote $20 billion to converting cars and trucks to run on alternative fuels.

Obama and his Republican rival, Arizona Senator John McCain, have sparred over the drilling issue in recent weeks. McCain reversed his opposition to offshore drilling and is pushing it as a way to lower gas prices and increase U.S. energy independence.

“We can keep drilling all we want but the long-term trend is for flat or decreasing oil supply and increased consumption,” Obama, 46, said today. “We can’t drill our way out of this problem.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Kim Chipman in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at kchipman@bloomberg.net.

original article

by: James Gerstenzang, The Los Angeles Times

A congressional investigation has produced new details on the degree to which senior Bush administration officials favored using the Clean Air Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions – until pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, ExxonMobil and others in the oil industry led the Bush administration to change course.

A report by the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, issued today, supports the disclosure by a former Environmental Protection Agency official last week that someone in Cheney’s office had a hand in the shift in policy.

Among the findings of the congressional investigation: There was wide senior-level support at the EPA for concluding that greenhouse gases are a danger to the public and that the EPA should regulate emissions – from vehicles, power plants, refineries and other sources.

That would have been a dramatic shift in federal policy, and it would have given the EPA a powerful hand in trying to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases widely blamed for causing global warming.

Among those supporting this view, the report said, were Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and three senior White House officials: Deputy Chief of Staff Joel D. Kaplan; Susan E. Dudley, regulatory chief at the Office of Management and Budget; and James L. Connaughton, chief of the Council on Environmental Quality. (more…)