Interior Secretary Ken Salazar launched the Obama administration’s first coordinated response to the impacts of climate change Monday, which he said would both monitor how global warming is altering the nation’s landscape and help the country cope with those changes. Salazar will lead a new ‘climate change response council’ that will coordinate action among the department’s eight bureaus and offices. A secretarial order will create eight ‘regional climate change response centers’ in areas ranging from Alaska to the Northeast and build landscape conservation cooperatives that will create strategies for the eight regions with the help of state and local groups, and other federal agencies. Interior manages one-fifth of the nation’s land mass and nearly 1.7 billion acres on the Outer Continental Shelf. ‘The Department of Interior must continue to change how it does business and respond to the issues of energy and climate change, which I see as the signature issues of the 21st century,’ Salazar said at a news conference. ‘The time this department operated under silos is a time that’s over.’ To curb climate change, Interior will explore methods to sequester carbon by storing it underground and by absorbing it through forests and rangelands, […]
If humanity is to continue burning fossil fuels in large quantities and yet curb the climate-changing effects of the resulting carbon dioxide, then somewhere other than the atmosphere will have to be found to put that CO2. The leading candidates at the moment are geological traps of the sort that hold natural gas in place; old coal mines; and carbonised plant matter (so-called biochar), which cannot rot and may help improve soil quality. There is even talk of dumping the stuff at the bottom of the sea. There is, however, another possibility. That is to short-circuit the natural geological process of weathering and use the CO2 to convert volcanic rocks into limestone. A pilot project called CarbFix, intended to test this idea, is under way in Iceland. Iceland is not overendowed with natural resources. It has fish in its seas, and hydro and geothermal power in its rivers and volcanoes (though only a small market for the resulting electricity). But one thing it is not short of is volcanic rock-and CarbFix may turn this, too, into a resource. Most of Iceland’s rock is basalt, a type that is rich in both calcium and magnesium. The actual chemical […]
Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize- winning economist, said the U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system after the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ‘In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger, Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris. ‘The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis. Stiglitz’s views echo those of former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who has advised President Barack Obama’s administration to curtail the size of banks, and Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, who suggested last month that governments may want to discourage financial institutions from growing ‘excessively. A year after the demise of Lehman forced the Treasury Department to spend billions to shore up the financial system, Bank of America Corp.’s assets have grown and Citigroup Inc. remains intact. In the U.K., Lloyds Banking Group Plc, 43 percent owned by the government, has taken over the activities of HBOS Plc, and in France BNP Paribas SA now owns the Belgian and Luxembourg banking assets of insurer Fortis. While Obama wants to name some banks as ‘systemically important and subject them […]
After receiving over 5,400 letters from Change.org community members, the Department of Labor released their long-awaited report on goods produced by child labor and forced labor today. Thank you all for urging DOL to release this important tool for consumers! This list was mandated by anti-trafficking legislation back in 2005, but the Bush administration dragged their feet for years. Now, thanks to your voices and the hard work of NGOs like Polaris Project and the International Labor Rights Forum, it’s finally here. This list is a huge boon for consumers who want to choose slave-free products. With this list, we as consumers can finally hold companies and countries accountable for the slavery they use in making the goods we buy, and we can decisively take action to prevent slavery in the production of consumer goods. Today, we as consumers are more powerful to end slavery than ever before. And you, through Change.org, helped make that happen. The report tops out at a daunting 194 pages, and can be read in it’s entirety here. But let’s face it — no one wants to read 194 page government report, no matter how useful it may be. So […]
Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va. In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater – polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals – caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away. Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system. ‘How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water? said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks. She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home. ‘How is this still happening today? she asked. When Mrs. Hall-Massey and 264 neighbors sued nine nearby coal companies, accusing them of putting dangerous waste into local water supplies, their lawyer […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
