Environment

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Why, after 30 years, are German Greens finding success in regional elections? In a recent article in the Guardian newspaper, Cem Özdemir, one of the  party’s  co-chair has an interesting thesis: the Greens are increasingly recognized as grownups able to address the most pressing issues in a way other parties can not.

In the past, surveys show, people liked the Greens but didn’t vote for them because they feared the party wouldn’t have the brain and muscle to run the country. This perception has changed over the last few years.

Http://bit.ly/g8uSvZ

What has lead to that change in perception?

Continue reading In Germany, Green is for grownup
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Germany’s Merkel Suffers Election Blow Over Nuclear Policy

Greens and Social Democrats Make Big Gains on Nuclear Debate

by Christiaan Hetzner, Reuters

STUTTGART, Germany – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives appeared set to lose power in a major regional stronghold on Sunday after early results suggested the anti-nuclear Greens were surging to their first ever state premiership.

German Green supporters

Supporters of the German Green Party react as they watch the first exit poll predictions for the state elections in Baden-Wuerttemberg Photo: AP

In Baden-Wuerttemberg state, where anti-nuclear sentiment has been mobilised by Japan’s nuclear crisis, the Greens and Social Democrats (SPD) were set to win 48.3 percent, eclipsing the Christian Democrats who have held power for six decades.

Continue reading Greens and Social Democrats Make Big Gains in Germany
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According to the EPA, more than 53 million children and about 6 million adults spend a substantial part of their days in schools.  The EPA has recognized that many schools have environmental problems, and, in 1995, released the first edition of its Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools kit to encourage school districts to address environmental problems. The EPA estimates that an average of one out of 13 school-age children has asthma, and that asthma is a leading cause of student absenteeism.  

Health concerns in schools are not limited to indoor air quality.  Recently, schools are identifying and remediating PCBs found in building materials.  As the public considers how to develop policies to respond to school-based health issues, they often consider AHERA, the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act as a model for regulating health issues in schools.  

Continue reading Asbestos Canaries in the Schools
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Ed. note: our hearts are with the people of Japan who are experiencing — again — the brutal downsides of human ingenuity, on top of the combined nightmare of two natural disasters. For a good live feed of news from NHK World TV, click here. For good information on the ongoing nuclear issues in Japan from the Union of Concerned Scientists, click here.

By Chris Burrell, The Patriot Ledger

Read the original article here

PLYMOUTH – The Pilgrim nuclear power plant runs the second-highest risk of catastrophic earthquake damage of all the nuclear plants in the country, according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission study.

The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth (photo credit: Entergy Corp.)

The agency estimates the risk of an earthquake damaging the core of Pilgrim’s reactor over the course of a year at 1 in 14,493, a significantly higher risk assessment than its previous estimate of 1 in 125,000.

The federal agency considered both earthquake probability and the stalwartness of a nuclear plant’s design in tallying those odds.

Continue reading Study: Plymouth nuke plant carries 2nd-highest risk of major earthquake damage
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While Bloomberg News was boasting that Chevron might be able to muscle its way out of paying a cent for the environmental damage that Texaco wrought upon Ecuador, Democracy Now! was reporting on the hypocrisy of Chevron’s legal maneuvers, led for years by our own Deval Patrick. Which side are you on, Governor Patrick?

Continue reading Chevron ordered to pay $17 billion for Ecuador pollution
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{ Installment 6 of Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity series }

The radical monopoly of industry

A desirable ceiling on the velocity of movement cannot be usefully discussed without returning to the distinction between self-powered transit and motorized transport, and comparing the contribution each component makes relative to the total locomotion of people, which I have called traffic.

Transport stands for the capital-intensive mode of traffic, and transit indicates the labor-intensive mode. Transport is the product of an industry whose clients are passengers. It is an industrial commodity and therefore scarce by definition. Improvement of transport always takes place under conditions of scarcity that become more severe as the speed-and with it the cost-of the service increases. Conflict about insufficient transport tends to take the form of a zero-sum game where one wins only if another loses. At best, such a conflict allows for the optimum in the Prisoner’s Dilemma: by cooperating with their jailer, both prisoners get off with less time in the cell.

Continue reading Energy and Equity: The radical monopoly of industry
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My friend, Tom Blue Newell, Uncle Scam, Deacon Blue, Nostrildamus, a Harvard Square busker and street performer ( http://www.unclescam.org ), stopped by this morning.  He’s thinking about a new show, especially since he expects to be recuperating from an operation this season.  He wants a “Rascal,” a motorized wheelchair with solar power that might also serve as a puppet in his show.  He already uses an amp for his performances and has a battery system mounted on his cargo trike.  He even has a little bit of solar.  He envisions a solar awning to charge the batteries that can run the wheelchair and power his audio and other equipment, too.  He also needs a place to keep it in Harvard Square.  He’d like something in the works within two weeks and a usable machine within two months.

Continue reading Solar Street Performance Vehicle
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Since it seems that we can’t expect too much out of the international or national policymakers for the next couple of years, I’ve been thinking that the next logical step for 350.org and the climate movement is to do it ourselves.  That could take the form of an ongoing global brainstorm on local, practical solutions where people who are working on projects can report their successes and failures, trade ideas on what works and what doesn’t, and help us all climb the learning curve faster as well as replicate successes quickly and modify them appropriately for different local conditions.

There are a number of people already thinking and working along these lines (appropedia, globalswadeshi, the coalition of the willing, global system for sustainable development…*) but they are dispersed, not networked, and there is no central nexus you can point people to.  This is something that needs to be done in order to make do it yourself climate change happen.  If done right, it would eliminate a lot of unnecessary duplication around the world and could build a community of practitioners that could be brought to bear on specific areas and problems like an Emergency Rescue Squad or ecological SWAT team.

Continue reading DIY Climate Change: Ongoing Global Brainstorm
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