Category: Environmental

Schumer: Enough votes to uphold KXL veto

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Man wearing tie holding up sign "Keystone Is An Act of War", other protesters next to him.

You ever see big bugs when you flip them onto their backs and their legs flail frantically? That’s how the Republicans will act when we stop the Keystone pipeline:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced on CBS’s Face The Nation that Senate Democrats have enough votes to sustain the widely expected veto that President Obama will issue after Republicans pass a bill authorizing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Schumer said, “I think there will be enough Democratic votes to sustain the president’s veto…Our Republican colleagues say that this is a jobs bill but that really is not true at all. By most estimates it would create several thousand temporary construction jobs and only 35 permanent jobs…Why create very few jobs with the dirtiest of energy from tar sands when you can create tens of thousands more clean jobs using wind and solar? Our Republican colleagues are doing what they always do: they’re appeasing a few special interests — in this case oil companies and pipeline companies and not really doing what’s good for the average middle class family in terms of creating jobs.”

Senate Republicans won’t get anywhere near the 67 votes that they will need to override a presidential veto of the bill to authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama made it clear that he was leaning towards vetoing the bill during his final press conference of 2014.

’88 seconds’

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

That’s how long each congress critter will get to debate the TPP. The holidays are over and it’s back to our depressing work as citizens. We need to stop this trade agreement:

Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida told Acronym TV’s Dennis Trainor that the United States did not go to war in Syria in September 2013 because the American public “rose up”. He says the same response to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) can prevent an unwise, democracy-killing trade bill from passing the Congress into law.

Although Mr. Grayson didn’t mention his theory of the TPP beyond, agreeably, the further concentration of corporate power at the expense of the people and their right to democratic actions in nations signing on to the trade deal, perhaps the real motivation behind TPP – plus the equally gigantic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – is corporate solidification of legal rules in their favor, before the people of the world can gather enough strength in unity to stop the trade deals. The reason both TPP and TTIP are so, so secretive is precisely to prevent the people of the world from becoming fully aware and rising in opposition – strongly enough for the people and democracy to prevail.

The feature of TPP which has outraged the most men and women, one of the few provisions which has become known – through “leaks” by Wikileaks and other avenues, is given the legal term “Investor-State-Dispute-Settlement”. This is how every dispute will become resolved among the signatory nations and their people. The angering aspect is that corporate tribunals – not traditional, neutral, government legal institutions – are given the power to make all the legal determinations.
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Gotcha!

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

GARY-SOUTHERN-facebook

I’m never happier than when a chemical polluter gets indicted:

Charleston, WV – Gary Southern, President of Freedom Industries during the January 2014 MCHM spill into the Elk River, is facing charges of bankruptcy fraud, lying under oath and wire fraud.

According to the criminal complaint filed in federal court in Charleston, Southern lied under oath about his role at Freedom Industries prior to the spill in order to deflect blame from himself and protect himself financially.

FBI Special Agent James Lafferty II says in the criminal complaint that Southern engaged “in a pattern of deceitful behavior, which included numerous false and/or fraudulent statements about his role at Freedom, his role in the sale of Freedom to Chemstream, and his knowledge about conditions at the Etowah Facility.”
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Pope Frank to take on climate issue

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Par7812024

I love this pope. That is all:

Pope Francis has declared it his mission to take on climate change in 2015, through a series of speeches, summit appearances and a rare call-to-arms for the world’s Catholics.

According to Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, the chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope wants to have a direct influence on the vital 2015 UN climate conference in Paris, the culmination of decades of negotiations that will help determine the planet’s future.
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It’s not like Cuomo to do the right thing

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Governor Cuomo Holds Cabinet Meeting

But he did!

ALBANY — The Cuomo administration announced Wednesday that it would ban hydraulic fracturing in New York State, ending years of uncertainty by concluding that the controversial method of extracting gas from deep underground could contaminate the state’s air and water and pose inestimable public-health risks.

“I cannot support high volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York,” said Howard Zucker, the acting commissioner of health.

That conclusion was delivered publicly during a year-end cabinet meeting called by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in Albany. It came amid increased calls by environmentalists to ban fracking, which uses water and chemicals to release natural gas trapped in deeply buried shale deposits.

The state has had a de facto ban on the procedure for more than five years, predating Mr. Cuomo’s first term. The decision also came as oil and gas prices continued to fall in many places around the country, in part because of surging American oil production, as fracking boosted output.

A giant corporation indicted? Wow

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Freedom Industries Site Demolished

We don’t see this happen too often, we should pay attention:

CHARLESTON, WV –Four owners and managers of Freedom Industries have been indicted and charged with federal violations of the Clean Water Act for failing to operate the company in an environmentally sound manner, resulting in the chemical leak that contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 people in January.

Dennis P. Farrell, William E. Tis, Charles E. Herzing and Gary L. Southern are each charged with three counts of violating the Clean Water Act.

Each man is charged with failing to meet a “reasonable standard of care” in running the company.

“Their negligence resulted in and caused the discharge of a pollutant, that is, MCHM, from point sources into the Elk River,” according to the indictment, unsealed today by U.S. Magistrate Judge Dwane L. Tinsley.

All minuses, no pluses in crude oil train shipments

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Oil Train Halted by Tripod Blockade Action- Rising Tide Seattle

No one really gives a shit about ordinary people’s concerns anymore:

(Reuters) – For the past 18 months, Americans from Albany to Oregon have voiced growing alarm over the rising number of oil-laden freight trains coursing through their cities, a trend they fear is endangering public safety.

In at least a handful of places, the public is also helping fund it.

States and the federal government have handed out tens of millions in public dollars to rail companies and government agencies to expand crude oil rail transportation across the country, a Reuters analysis has found.

The public assistance in states like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma and Oregon comes as railroads are posting record profits, and as state and federal authorities press for safety overhauls that the oil and rail industries have opposed, following several explosive derailments.
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Floriduh

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Florida International University Century Bank Arena, Miami, Florida

Painfully stupid and venal, considering this is the state at immediate risk of being underwater. Oh well!

TALLAHASSEE — State regulators on Tuesday approved proposals to gut Florida’s energy-efficiency goals by more than 90 percent and to terminate solar rebate programs by the end of 2015, giving the investor-owned utilities virtually everything they wanted.

After almost two hours of debate, members of the state Public Service Commission voted 3-2 in support of staff recommendations that backed the proposals of Duke Energy Florida, Tampa Electric and Florida Power & Light.

The two dissenters, Commissioners Lisa Edgar and Julie Brown, said they could not agree with a plan that so drastically altered state energy policy.

“It’s not the direction I want to go in,” Edgar said before the vote. “I am uncomfortable going to the reduced goals. It is a policy and it is a statement, as a state, of what our energy policies are.”

Brown said although energy efficiency and solar programs have costs, the state needs to balance all its needs.

They never, ever, ever give up

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Here’s a “hit head on desk” moment for you!

While their Senate colleagues were engaged in a fiery debate over the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, the House on Tuesday quietly passed a bill that environmentalists say would hamper the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to use the best scientific information when crafting regulations to protect public health and the environment.

The House voted 229-191 to pass H.R. 1422, which would change the rules for appointing members to the Science Advisory Board (SAB), a group that gives scientific advice to the EPA Administrator. Also called the Science Advisory Board Reform Act, the bill would make it easier for scientists with financial ties to corporations to serve on the SAB, prohibit independent scientists from talking about their own research on the board, and make it more difficult for scientists who have applied for grants from the EPA to join the board.