Renewable Revolution

NASA’s Time Lapse Video Shows Humanity’s Impact on the Earth

Lorraine Chow | May 7, 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNQ9z_Eb-Jc&feature=player_embedded

Associated article at link:

http://ecowatch.com/2015/05/07/nasa-humanitys-impact-on-earth/

EPA’s new rules on river pollution outrage the usual suspects      

By Nathanael Johnson  on 27 May 2015   

The Environmental Protection Agency Wednesday released a long-awaited and long-debated rule for interpreting the Clean Water Act. The EPA has regulated rivers since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, but Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 reduced the scope of government authority to protect water against pollution. Since that time, it has been unclear what the government is allowed to regulate. A New York Times article in 2010 suggested that this rollback was allowing pollution that previously would have been illegal:


“This is a huge deal,” James M. Tierney, the New York State assistant commissioner for water resources, said of the new constraints. “There are whole watersheds that feed into New York’s drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected”…

“Cases now are lost because the company is discharging into a stream that flows into a river, rather than the river itself,” said David M. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan who led the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department during the last administration.

The new EPA rule doesn’t give the agency as much authority as it previously wielded under the Clean Water Act. But it says the EPA will regulate tributaries of navigable rivers, wetlands, and a few other environmentally important bodies of water, like prairie potholes and vernal pools in California.

If you haven’t been following this, you may wonder why it’s controversial. That’s a fair question. As Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) pointed out in an op-ed, these regulations used to seem like common sense to both Republicans and Democrats:


The draft rule relies on more than 1,200 pieces of peer-reviewed scientific literature that evaluate the critical functions that various types of water bodies perform. It restores protections that the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush championed.

Still, the EPA’s critics were outraged by the rule. House Speaker John Boehner called it “a raw and tyrannical power grab.”

That rhetoric provides a clue as to why this is an issue. Some people are convinced that the whole thing is a sneaky way of socializing their private land: First, the government makes you get a permit to pee in your own puddle, and before you know it, Obama is body-surfing in your irrigation ditch.

Now, there’s a legitimate argument from level-headed farmers that things would work more smoothly (and water quality wouldn’t suffer) with fewer rules and less regulation. But the paranoia that drives much of the opposition to this rule is positively Jade Helm level.

The EPA held more than 400 meetings and reviewed over a million comments before making this rule. Most of those comments supported the move. The rule specifically excludes various smaller bodies of water from regulation, including ditches that carry water to fields, artificial ponds, rice paddies, and erosion gullies. Nonetheless, Republicans in Congress are already organizing to draft a bill to override the rule.

http://grist.org/politics/epas-new-rules-on-river-pollution-outrage-the-usual-suspects/

 

06/03/2015 04:49 PM   

Fast-Track Vote Down to the Wire, Any Day Now

SustainableBusiness.com News

by Rona Fried 

After the Senate passed Fast-Track legislation, the House is next and the vote could come any day now. About a dozen Democrats hang in the balance and I'm not sure how many Republicans - but the vote will be close.

 As a reminder, the US is the only country in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that is pushing for fast-track - which gives Congress an up or down vote on the completed deal, with no ability to amend it. 


 This week, a panel of United Nations experts expressed grave doubts these secret international "trade" agreements pose to human rights.

"Our concerns relate to the rights to life, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, science and culture, improved labor standards, an independent judiciary, a clean environment and the right not to be subjected to forced resettlement," they write. That about covers it, doesn't it?

In particular, they point to the "investor-state dispute settlement" system, where corporations can sue local, state or federal governments - at a corporate tribunal, not our justice system - for regulations that impede their profits.

 Intrusive investor state awards have a "chilling effect when States are penalized for adopting regulations, for example to protect the environment, food security, access to generic and essential medicines, or raising the minimum wage."

Wikileaks' $100,000 Reward

This week, WikiLeaks launched a crowd-sourcing campaign to raise $100,000 for "America's Most Wanted Secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNsHAHQh4Es&feature=player_embedded

WikiLeaks published three leaked chapters and they want the other 26. 

Read our article, WikiLeaks Reveals Environment Chapter of Trans-Pacific Partnership Deal.

"The problem is that these deals are put together using a rigged negotiating process. Our trade negotiators tend to come out of giant, multinational corporations - particularly from Wall Street - and tend to return to them. The 600 "advisors" on the TPP are dominated by corporate representatives. Not only does this set up a corporate-favoring (therefore labor-/environmentalist-hating) mindset within the agency, it also creates an understanding that participants should "play ball" and not make waves against corporate interests if they want to obtain a lucrative corporate position after leaving government. The inevitable result is agreements that rig the game in favor of the interests of the giant, multinational corporations and their investors over the interests of the rest of us - and our government," explains Dave Johnson at Campaign for America's Future.

"There is a reason that Wall Street, giant multinational corporations, Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable,  Republican Party leadership and all the other anti-worker lobbying representatives of giant corporations and billionaires are for TPP - and all labor unions, progressives, Democrats (except a few who hope to be lobbyists later), citizen groups, consumer groups, internet freedom, health groups, LGBT groups, food-safety groups, environmental groups and so many others oppose it," he says.

"TPP would follow in the footsteps of other disastrous trade pacts. NAFTA, Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and other trade deals are a major reason why some 60,000 American factories closed since 2001 as manufacturers shifted jobs to low-wage nations overseas and 4.7 million American jobs disappeared," says Senator Bernie Sanders who is running for President.

Read our article, Progressive Caucus Offers Alternative to Fast-Track Trade Deals.

Examples of Investor   State Dispute

Stop calling TPP a trade agreement. It is a corporate/investor rights agreement, Johnson says.

Where Your Meat Comes From: Last month, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled against US "country of origin labels" (COOL) on meat under NAFTA.

 Mexico and Canada sued the US government on behalf of their meat industries, arguing that labeling is too costly, creates logistical problems, and is protectionist. US meatpackers are also against labels, but they have lost in our courts each time they tried. WTO's ruling is final and can't be appealed. So much for the US judiciary system.

COOL passed in the US Congress as part of the 2008 Farm Bill. It requires that all meat sold in supermarkets be labeled with where the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered. It has overwhelming support of the American public and allows the USDA to quickly determine the source of adulterated meat and food borne illnesses.

TPP's investor-state provision goes even further - corporations can also sue countries.   

Mining in El Salvador: OceanaGold, a Canadian gold miner, is suing the country under CAFTA for not allowing it to mine there.    El Salvador's water is mostly polluted and doesn't want more mines for social and environmental reasons. The company wants compensation equivalent to 5% of El Salvador's GDP and has already spent over $13 million on legal fees.

Ecuador terminates Occidental Oil's contract and is fined $2.3 billion! 

Vattenfall, a Sweden-based utility that operates two nuclear plants in Germany is suing for $4.7 billion  because the country is shutting all nuclear plants.

"Arbitrators are paid $600-700 an hour, giving them little incentive to dismiss cases; and the secretive nature of the arbitration process and the lack of any requirement to consider precedent gives wide scope for creative judgments," says The Economist.

Hundreds of tech companies sent a letter to Congress expressing concerns that it threatens fair use, may lead to more costly forms of online copyright enforcement, criminalize whistleblowing and investigative journalism.

Read, Top Reasons to Oppose Fast Tracking the TPP. 

Call Your Representative!

Make your views known to your representative, and let your friends and family know. You can follow the action on Twitter at #stopfasttrack and use this service to easily call your rep:
 
Website: http://clicktocallcongress.org/
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/26327

Drone Captures Remarkable Footage Of A Whale Family: It Makes You Think About What We’ve Done

June 6, 2015 by Arjun Walia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J917zEOgzT8&feature=player_embedded

For the first time ever, a mother grey whale has been caught on camera with two calves, thanks to the help of drone technology. Experts are unsure if the second calf was adopted by the mother, which would be extremely unlikely, or if the two calves are twins, which would be a similarly rare occurrence. There are no other known cases of a grey whale with two calves at once. This footage comes from Captain Dave’s Dolphin & Whale Safari, based out of Dana Point, California.

It’s beautiful footage of these majestic creatures. Unfortunately, human activity is literally laying waste to their home.

For example, the nuclear power plant disaster at Fukushima resulted in 300 to possibly over 450 tons of contaminated water containing radioactive iodine, cesium, and strontium-89 and 90 being flooded into the Pacific Ocean every single day. Contaminated water is still leaking and still poses a major problem.

A second example would be the BP oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, which was so large that it could not be concealed from the public. There are plenty of smaller-scale oil spills occurring which we don’t hear about.

A third example would be the fact that whales have been showing up dead on multiple beaches, bringing forth a very powerful message in the form of stomachs full of plastic. This has happened multiple times, and you can read more about it here.

North East of Hawaii, the ocean currents form a giant whirlpool of debris from around the Pacific called the North Pacific Gyre. It’s one of the largest ecosystems on Earth, comprising millions of square kilometres. Today, it’s better known as “The Great Garbage Patch,” an area the size of Queensland, Australia with approximately one million tonnes of plastic collecting in the ocean. You can read more about that here.

These are just a few examples of the impact human activity is having on the oceans. It’s important that we recognize the fact that it’s time to change our ways here and do things differently. Our entire “system” set up here is one that is clearly not working. We can have a planet where all life can thrive, where our activity does not destroy it. We can

If you are asking yourself “how” then I do not know what to tell you, there are thousands of different ways! If you truly want to know, all it takes is a little research. The solutions are out there. Back in 2013, we reported on the story of 19 year old Boyan Slat, who had developed a device with the capacity to remove 7,250,000 tonnes of plastic and garbage from the world’s oceans in just 5 years. Boyan, now 20, and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup Project, has just announced that his project will come into fruition by 2016.

Technology isn’t the problem. From new ways of generating energy and growing food, to advancements in medicine, we have the ability to change things right now, at this very moment. What we need is a shift in the way we think about the world. We need a shift in the way we see ourselves and our relationship with, not only the other life on this planet, but the planet itself.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”  – Albert Einstein

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/06/06/drone-captures-remarkable-footage-of-a-whale-family-it-makes-you-think-about-what-weve-done/