Ok this might not be a completely accurate statement but it felt good to say and gosh darn it...this is my blog. Brad Knickerbocker a fellow Oregonian and father of a colleague from Principia College, wrote an article in the Christian Science Monitor on February 20th that I think it would be great for everyone to read. The article is called Humans' beef with livestock: a warmer planet and I hope you take a time to put down your burger, veggie or beef and take a look at this.
Some food for thought (from the article) to whet your appetite, "American meat eaters are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon dioxide per person that vegetarian every year."
"Arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products," writes Noam Mohr in a report for EarthSave International.
Once again click here to read the story. Take it from me a vegetarian of 8 years now it is really a great change that makes you feel better, treats the planet better, introduces you to so many more types of foods and is the right thing to do.
The Bush administration has been on a six-year campaign to expand its powers, often beyond what the Constitution allows. So it is odd to hear it claim that it lacks the power to slow global warming by limiting the emission of harmful gases. But that is just what it will argue to the Supreme Court tomorrow, in what may be the most important environmental case in many years.
A group of 12 states, including
The Bush administration insists that the E.P.A. does not have the power to limit these gases. It argues that they are not "air pollutants" under the Clean Air Act. Alternatively, it contends that the court should dismiss the case because the states do not have "standing," since they cannot show that they will be specifically harmed by the agency's failure to regulate greenhouse gases.
A plain reading of the Clean Air Act shows that the states are right. The act says that the E.P.A. "shall" set standards for "any air pollutant" that in its judgment causes or contributes to air pollution that "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." The word "welfare," the law says, includes "climate" and "weather." The E.P.A. makes an array of specious arguments about why the act does not mean what it expressly says. But it has no right to refuse to do what Congress said it "shall" do.
Beneath the statutory and standing questions, this is a case about how seriously the government takes global warming. The E.P.A.'s decision was based in part on its poorly reasoned conclusion that there was too much "scientific uncertainty" about global warming to worry about it. The government's claim that the states lack standing also scoffs at global warming, by failing to acknowledge that the states have a strong interest in protecting their land and citizens against coastal flooding and the other kinds of damage that are being projected.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, climate scientists from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Stanford University and other respected institutions warn that "the scientific evidence of the risks, long time lags and irreversibility of climate change argue persuasively for prompt regulatory action." The Supreme Court can strike an important blow in defense of the planet simply by ruling that the E.P.A. must start following the law."
BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 14 — Voters in this liberal college town have approved what environmentalists say may be the nation's first "carbon tax," intended to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases.
The tax, to take effect on April 1, will be based on the number of kilowatt-hours used. Officials say it will add $16 a year to an average homeowner's electricity bill and $46 for businesses.
City officials said the revenue from the tax — an estimated $6.7 million by 2012, when the goal is to have reduced carbon emissions by 350,000 metric tons — would be collected by the main gas and electric utility, Xcel Energy, and funneled through the city's Office of Environmental Affairs .
The tax is to pay for the "climate action plan," efforts to "increase energy efficiency in homes and buildings, switch to renewable energy and reduce vehicle miles traveled," the city's environmental affairs manager, Jonathan Koehn, said.
The goal is to reduce the carbon levels to 7 percent less than those in 1990, which amounts to a 24 percent reduction from current levels, Mr. Koehn said.
"The climate action plan serves as the roadmap to meet our reduction goal," he said.
The tax grew out of efforts by a committee of residents and members of the City Council and Chamber of Commerce to try to enable Boulder to reach goals set by the United Nations Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to curb global warming.
The protocol requires 35 developing nations to reduce their emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. The world's top two polluters, the United States and China, have not signed the pact.
The Boulder environmental sustainability coordinator, Sarah Van Pelt, said residents who used alternative sources of electricity like wind power would receive a discount on the tax based on the amount of the alternative power used.
A total of 5,600 residents and 210 businesses use wind power, Ms. Van Pelt said.
A program similar to Boulder's began in Oregon in 2001. There, a 3 percent fee is assessed on electricity bills by the two largest investor-owned utilities, said Michael Armstrong, a policy analyst in the Portland Office of Sustainable Development.
The tens of millions of dollars is transferred to the Energy Trust of Oregon, a nonprofit organization, rather than the state government. The trust distributes cash incentives to businesses and residents for using alternative sources like solar and wind power, biomass energy and structural improvements to improve efficiency.
Mr. Armstrong said that although Portland had several programs for "sustainable living," it had not enacted a carbon tax and that he knew of no other American city with one.
"We are interested to see how it plays out and see what we can learn from that," he said of the Boulder tax. "We certainly follow other local governments, and there are lots of innovative initiatives all over the country. It's a great exchange among local communities."
“A Transition Plan for the United States
Carolina Cositore
A comment by Venezuelan writer Roberto Hernandez Montoya, in response to the US throwing millions of tax dollars into a plan to force its "transition to democracy in Cuba", to wit the US and the world would be better served by a transition to democracy in its own country "scratched behind my ears" as a friend would say, or really hit the nail on the head.” Click to read more….
I really think that Cubans have some great ideas and the national government seems to be doing some positive things. When I look at Fox News or CNN, read the Washington Post or get information from most other US based news sources, I get a slanted view of Cuba. In looking at Prensa Latina and other sources I get another side to the story (yes, there are usually more than two) and who is to know which is right. This is one of the main reasons that I want to visit Cuba to see it for myself and be able to reach my own conclusions about this mysterious island so close to the US which still seems so far away. To me
There are some other interesting articles that I found at Prensa Latina a few weeks back and wanted to share now. The first, is titled “Two Ways of Getting a College Education” and it starts off by saying: “Cuban students have the privilege of having access to university careers whatever their social standing, they must simply have the aptitude and knowledge required by the specific field chosen.” The rest is just as intriguing as this first paragraph.
The second article tells of how Oliver Stone, famed
Finally, I don’t think I have previously mentioned on this blog about Pastors for Peace, a
On a less militant note I will be going to see the Afro Cuban All Stars this Saturday night with a friend who graduated from
McFree since 1998! I been avoiding/boycotting McDonald's for 8 plus years and people from
If you haven’t seen Morgan Spurlock’s brilliant movie “Super Size Me” I would highly recommend that you do. Some of you will look on the internet and find dissenting views to Spurlock’s such as Wikipedia’s* article on Super Size Me which lists objections and alternative views on Spurlock's experiment. Also of note is an article published just last week in the Guardian Unlimted called “Only another 5,500 calories to go ...” which tells of another recent experiment conducted in Sweden with interesting results.
Even with those that are against Super Size Me, I would still recommend that you see it. I have provided you alternate viewpoints so that you know that I have done my research and know that there is not always one side to a story. There are some other websites that are interesting to visit and read. First, is McSpotlight.org which highlights some of the underhanded and unethical things that McDonald's has done over the years. This site was born in part out of the infamous McDonald's Restaurants v Morris & Steel popularly known as the McLibel trial. I especially recommend looking at this page of Mc Spotlight to see how McDonald's is not alone as a multinational abusing the rights of the people and the planet.
Also, at Harpers.org you can find out more stories written over the years on McDonald's. For some fun go to play this McDonald's game and see how you too can contribute to global warming, globalization and world domination.
Finally, read this article from The Nation to see how the
“Jose Bove's Not Welcome in Bush's
Few figures have contributed more to the debate about corporate globalization than Jose Bove, the French farmer whose dismantling of a McDonald's restaurant that was under construction near his sheep farm was something of a "shot-heard-round-the-world" in the struggle against the homogenization of food, culture and lifestyles.”
* I am well aware that Wikipedia is a potentially dangerous and unreliable site on the internet due to being "open source", yet it seems to be a good place to start ones research.
