Wednesday, June 4th, 2014
BRYCE COVERT, - Think Progress
Stephan: This is a very important essay to read and think about. The report documents the severe unreality of the two Supreme Court decisions on money as speech in politics. Here is real evidence of the disconnect between the one per cent and the 99 per cent. While it is still a viable option this is why voting matters.
The rich aren’t like you and me. In public polling, the policy preferences of the top 1 percent of earners look very different than the general public’s.
The Campaign for America’s Future compared recent polling of the 1 percent, or those who have an average income of more than $1 million a year, with an averaging of public opinion polling from groups such as Gallup and Pew of Americans generally. Overall, the general public is strongly in favor of government spending on a variety of anti-poverty, educational, and jobs related initiatives while there is much more tepid support from elites. Meanwhile, the richest among us are quicker to favor deep cuts to services and programs.
When it comes to lifting people up, more than three-quarters of the general public thinks the minimum wage should be high enough that someone working full time doesn’t fall below the poverty line, but just 40 percent of the elites agree.
Nearly 90 percent of Americans think the government should spend whatever is necessary to make sure all children can go to high-quality public schools, but just over a third of the richest think so.
Nearly 80 percent of the public thinks the government should make sure […]
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Stephan: Today's SR is devoted to the ignorance and greed that is the hallmark of all too many industrialized societies. The U.S., Canada, and Australia, all three have governments dominated by carbon energy and chemical industries. As a result all three are making decisions that history will condemn. I see these stories every day, and it just becomes ever more clear to me that the only hope for the future is an electorate the rises up and compels, through its votes, a fundamental change. But equally clear to me is the sad truth this is unlikely to happen. About a third of voters in all three countries are what are euphemistically known as low-information theological or ideological voters. In the end we will have no one to blame but ourselves. In the U.S., November's vote will tell us our fate.
-- Stephan
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LINDSAY ABRAMS, Assistant Editor - Salon
Stephan: I don't think one can characterize Monsanto as anything other than an evil corporation.
Monarch butterflies are pretty impressive insects: Aside from that whole metamorphosis thing, they’re famous for their annual winter migration, an up to 3,000-mile journey across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. The breathtaking spectacle that results when they alight, by the millions, in central Mexico is the sort that inspires legends, not to mention sustains the country’s tourist industry.
But if the monarchs can be said to have a fatal flaw, it’s that they’re are entirely dependent upon milkweed. And milkweed, once common in the American Midwest, has been all but eliminated from the cropland where it once thrived, the loss a side effect of our growing, and increasingly efficient, industrial agriculture system. While the monarch itself isn’t yet endangered, its stunning migration could soon become a thing of the past.
There are actually a lot of places where we can place the blame for this. The push, by Congress, to use corn-based ethanol as biofuel didn’t help matters, and climate change certainly isn’t doing the butterflies any favors, either. The question now is what we’re going to do about it. Enter Chip Taylor, insect ecologist and founder of Monarch Watch. The group, which has been operating since 1992 out of the University […]
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Stephan: What we are doing in our crazed drive for profit above all other priorities is affecting not just us. We are in the midst of a 6th extinction and, except for a few scientists we don't seem to know this, or to care if we do.
A new landmark study, published yesterday in Science, has found that the current rate of species extinctions is more than 1,000 times greater than their natural rate, calculated from the fossil record and genetic data spanning millions of years, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
The primary cause of this dramatic rise in loss of species is human population growth, habitat loss and increased consumption, as well as uncertainties in predicting future extinctions from the spread of invasive species, diseases and climate change.
‘This important study confirms that species are going extinct at a pace not seen in tens of millions of years, and unlike past extinction events, the cause is us,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director with the Center for Biological Diversity. ‘The loss of species has drastic consequences for us all by degrading ecosystems that clean our air and water and are a source of food and medicine, and by making our world less interesting and a more lonely place. This study underscores the importance of laws like the Endangered Species Act and the need for swift action to reverse the disturbing trend of extinction.”
The study is one of the most comprehensive assessment on species extinction […]
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KIRSTEN ALEXANDER, - The Daily Beast
Stephan: As in Canada and the U.S. so too in Australia carbon energy interests own the government. And when carbon interests own the government, this is what happens. Australia is condemning its future, as we are condemning ours. This is why I think only local action is going to be useful. It won't stop the changes that are coming, particularly for those communities in areas where the impact of climate change will be particularly extreme. But where the changes are less dramatic it can make the difference between having a future or not having one.
Australia’s government has plans to open up the Great Barrier Reef-a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site-to a coal port that would dump millions of tonnes of toxic sediment upon the fragile coral ecosystem.
Since the conservative Tony Abbott-led Liberal government took office last September, it has pushed through only eight pieces of legislation thanks to a hostile Senate. But in July, the country faces a Senate ‘changeover” that will flip the balance of power in favor of the government. At that point, Australians-not to mention environmentalists and tourists-better brace themselves.
Abbott has long prioritized big business over eco-friendly measures: He has already shuttered the Climate Commission (established to ‘provide reliable and authoritative” info about climate change) and ARENA, the agency responsible for increasing the amount of renewable energy sources used in the country. He’s introduced bills to repeal the carbon tax and the mining tax. And now, he’s gunning for some of the country’s most pristine ecosystems, from the forests of Tasmania to the Great Barrier Reef.
Abbott has vowed to ‘unlock” areas of Tasmania’s protecting forest for logging, saying, ‘We have quite enough national parks. We have quite enough locked up forests already. In fact, in an important respect, we have too […]
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