Helen Caldicott - After Fukushima, Enough Is Enough

Dr. Helen Caldicott is on the Progressive Radio Network every Sunday at 3pm(ET) with "If You Love This Planet." Listen live at PRN.fm

Published on Friday, December 2, 2011 by the International Herald Tribune

by Helen Caldicott

The nuclear power industry has been resurrected over the past decade by a lobbying campaign that has left many people believing it to be a clean, green, emission-free alternative to fossil fuels. These beliefs pose an extraordinary threat to global public health and encourage a major financial drain on national economies and taxpayers. The commitment to nuclear power as an environmentally safe energy source has also stifled the mass development of alternative technologies that are far cheaper, safer and almost emission free — the future for global energy.

When the Fukushima Daiichi reactors suffered meltdowns in March, literally in the backyard of an unsuspecting public, the stark reality that the risks of nuclear power far outweigh any benefits should have become clear to the world. As the old quip states, “Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water.”

Instead, the nuclear industry has used the disaster to increase its already extensive lobbying efforts. A few nations vowed to phase out nuclear energy after the disaster. But many others have remained steadfast in their commitment. That has left millions of innocent people unaware that they — all of us — may face a medical catastrophe beyond all proportions in the wake of Fukushima and through the continued widespread use of nuclear energy.

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Christopher Ketcham - Radiation From Cell Phones and WiFi Are Making People Sick -- Are We All at Risk?

By Christopher Ketcham, Earth Island Journal

Posted on December 2, 2011, Printed on December 3, 2011
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/warning_high_frequency/

Consider this story: It's January 1990, during the pioneer build-out of mobile phone service. A cell tower goes up 800 feet from the house of Alison Rall, in Mansfield, Ohio, where she and her husband run a 160-acre dairy farm. The first thing the Rall family notices is that the ducks on their land lay eggs that don't hatch. That spring there are no ducklings.

By the fall of 1990, the cattle herd that pastures near the tower is sick. The animals are thin, their ribs are showing, their coats growing rough, and their behavior is weird -- they're agitated, nervous. Soon the cows are miscarrying, and so are the goats. Many of the animals that gestate are born deformed. There are goats with webbed necks, goats with front legs shorter than their rear legs. One calf in the womb has a tumor the size of a basketball, another carries a tumor three feet in diameter, big enough that he won't pass through the birth canal. Rall and the local veterinarian finally cut open the mother to get the creature out alive. The vet records the nightmare in her log: "I've never seen anything like this in my entire practice... All of [this] I feel was a result of the cellular tower."

Within six months, Rall's three young children begin suffering bizarre skin rashes, raised red "hot spots." The kids are hit with waves of hyperactivity; the youngest child sometimes spins in circles, whirling madly. The girls lose hair. Rall is soon pregnant with a fourth child, but she can't gain weight. Her son is born with birth defects -- brittle bones, neurological problems -- that fit no specific syndrome. Her other children, conceived prior to the arrival of the tower, had been born healthy.

Desperate to understand what is happening to her family and her farm, Rall contacts the Environmental Protection Agency. She ends up talking to an EPA scientist named Carl Blackman, an expert on the biological effects of radiation from electromagnetic fields (EMFs) -- the kind of radiofrequency EMFs (RF-EMFs) by which all wireless technology operates, including not just cell towers and cell phones but wi-fi hubs and wi-fi-capable computers, "smart" utility meters, and even cordless home phones. "With my government cap on, I'm supposed to tell you you're perfectly safe," Blackman tells her. "With my civilian cap on, I have to tell you to consider leaving."

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Mary Robinson & Desmond Tutu - Climate Justice

http://www.nationofchange.org/climate-justice-1322760404

By Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson

Before the Copenhagen climate-change summit two years ago, the two of us sat together in Cape Town to listen to five African farmers from different countries, four of whom were women, tell us how climate change was undermining their livelihoods. Each explained how floods and drought, and the lack of regular seasons to sow and reap, were outside their normal experience. Their fears are shared by subsistence farmers and indigenous people worldwide – the people bearing the brunt of climate shocks, though they played no part in causing them.

Now, two years later, we are in Durban, where South Africa is hosting this year’s climate-change conference, COP17, and the situation for poor people in Africa and elsewhere has deteriorated even further. In its latest report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that it is virtually certain that, in global terms, hot days have become hotter and occur more often; indeed, they have increased in frequency by a factor of 10 in most regions of the world.

Moreover, the brutal paradox of climate change is that heavy precipitation is occurring more often as well, increasing the risk of flooding. Since 2003, East Africa has had the eight warmest years on record, which is no doubt contributing to the severe famine that now afflicts 13 million people in the Horn of Africa.

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Adam Federman - What Killed Dunkard Creek? Residents in Pennsylvania and West Virginia Say Fracking

Published on Thursday, December 1, 2011 by Earth Island Journal

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/what_killed_dunkard_creek/

by Adam Federman

On August 27, 2009, Dan Cincotta, a fisheries biologist with West Virginia’s Department of Natural Resources, was conducting a routine inventory of Dunkard Creek, a small river that runs through West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. He was accompanied by a consultant and an environmental engineer from the state’s largest coal and gas company, Consol Energy, which operates a coalmine, Blacksville #2, just outside of Wana, West Virginia. Cincotta was supposed to do electro-fish surveys, whereby the fish are temporarily stunned in order to assess populations, and to take a series of conductivity readings – a basic measure of how much salt is dissolved in water.

When his first reading measured 20,000 micro siemens per centimeter squared (µS/cm), Cincotta thought his equipment was broken; he had never seen readings above 5,000. The Consol consultant took her own reading in the same location but farther from the riverbank. It registered 40,000 µS/cm. Still in disbelief, Cincotta says, “we wandered upstream and found [Consol’s mining] discharge. And in the discharge alone, straight out of the pipe our equipment registered over 50,000 µS/cm,” roughly the equivalent of seawater. Untreated acid mine discharges typically have conductance values of between 1,000 and 1,500 µS/cm.

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Justin McCurry - Fukushima Fuel Rods May Have Completely Melted

Published on Friday, December 2, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/02/fukushima-fuel-rods-completely-melted

One of the plant's nuclear reactors was close to being breached as fuel rods bore through its concrete floor, says Tepco

by Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Fuel rods inside one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have completely melted and bored most of the way through a concrete floor, the reactor's last line of defence before its steel outer casing, the plant's operator said.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said in a report that fuel inside reactor No 1 appeared to have dropped through its inner pressure vessel and into the outer containment vessel, indicating that the accident was more severe than first thought.

The revelation that the plant may have narrowly averted a disastrous "China syndrome" scenario comes days after reports that the company had dismissed a 2008 warning that the plant was inadequately prepared to resist a tsunami.

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Jon Herskovitz - Drinking the Radioactive Kool-Aid: Countries Switching From Coal to Nuclear

Published on Thursday, December 1, 2011 by Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/

by Jon Herskovitz

DURBAN - South Africa, the host of U.N. global climate talks, is faced with a conundrum -- it wants to wean itself off of coal-powered plants seen as primate culprits of greenhouse gas emissions and find a cleaner energy source.

It is turning to nuclear power, despite the catastrophic environmental degradation the world witnessed after Japan's Fukushima plant disaster this year.

The global climate talks that opened earlier this week in Durban are seeing a widening division on nuclear power, with many advanced economies moving away from it after Fukushima and emerging states heavily reliant on fossil fuels embracing it as a cleaner way to power their development.

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Rainforest Action Network - Bankrolling Climate Change: New Study Ranks Top 20 Climate Killer Banks

November 30, 2011

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) http://www.ran.org/bankrolling-climate-change-new-study-ranks-top-20-climate-killer-banks

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - November 30 - Today, as world leaders gather in Durban to discuss solutions to global climate change, an international coalition of civil society and environmental organizations released a new study, “Bankrolling Climate Change,” highlighting the top 20 banks that finance the coal industry. The study examines commercial banks’ lending for the coal industry and provides the first comprehensive climate ranking for financial institutions. The study finds JPMorgan Chase, Citi and Bank of America to be the top three banks in the world financing climate change.

A full copy of the study with a ranking of all the researched banks can be downloaded at www.banktrack.org.

The report comes from German environment organization urgewald, the South African social and environmental justice organizations groundWork and Earthlife Africa Johannesburg and the international network BankTrack.

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TERRA DAILY - Pakistan most affected by climate change

by Staff Writers, TERRA DAILY
Durban, South Africa (UPI) Dec 1, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Pakistan_most_affected_by_climate_change_999.html

Pakistan topped the list in a ranking of countries that suffered the most from the effects of climate change, a new report says.

Released on the sidelines of the U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa, the "Global Climate Risk Index 2012" by Germanwatch, a European non-governmental organization, looked at the effects of extreme weather events from 1991-2010, based on data from insurance giant Munich Re.

"[The index] recognizes the now indisputable fact that Pakistan faces climate impacts which are not only happening in real time but in a widely diverse pattern -- ranging from extreme events such as cyclones, glacial melting and floods as well as indirect impacts such as droughts, shifting cropping patterns and climate-induced migrants," said Pakistan's former environment minister, Malik Amin Aslam, Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper reports.

Just from the floods of 2010, which affected some 8 million people, Pakistan incurred an economic loss worth an estimated $9.6 billion, said Farrukh Iqbal Khan, a member of Pakistan's delegation to Durban.

"We have had floods again this year and we are not really prepared for extreme events of the scale we saw in 2010," Khan said. "The rising financial costs for coping with climate disasters, highlighted in the report, are also in line with our internal analysis which forecasts these climate finance needs to be in the range of $6 billion-14 billion per annum for Pakistan."

While Pakistan was ranked No. 1 on the list of countries that suffered the most from climate change in 2010, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Honduras topped the long-term index.

Sven Harmeling, author of the index and team leader of International Climate Policy at Germanwatch, said the climate summit will be decisive for necessary commitments made by governments to reverse the global emissions trend.

"The current inadequate promises of the world's governments to fight climate change will push our limits of preparing for disasters and adaptation," he said.

But the Pakistani government isn't confident it will have the opportunity to present its viewpoint in Durban, The News International reports, noting that a large number of developing countries are unlikely to have any say during the proceedings of the 10-day conference which opened Monday.

"We (the developing countries) are not able to even raise (our) voice for our rights as the developed countries enjoy strong influence over the agenda and even (the) output of these kinds of conferences," said Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry, former director general of the Meteorological Department of Pakistan.

SETH BORENSTEIN - Federal report: Arctic much worse since 2006

By SETH BORENSTEIN | AP

http://news.yahoo.com/federal-report-arctic-much-worse-since-2006-182055700.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal officials say the Arctic region has changed dramatically in the past five years — for the worse.

It's melting at a near record pace, and it's darkening and absorbing too much of the sun's heat.

A new report card from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rates the polar region with blazing red stop lights on three of five categories and yellow cautions for the other two. Overall, these are not good grades, but it doesn't mean the Arctic is doomed and it still will freeze in the winter, said report co-editor Jackie Richter-Menge.

The Arctic acts as Earth's refrigerator, cooling the planet. What's happening, scientists said, is like someone pushing the fridge's thermostat much too high.

"It's not cooling as well as it used to," Richter-Menge said.

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U of Alaska - Abrupt permafrost thaw increases climate threat

http://www.iab.uaf.edu/news/index.php?newsrel=97 U of Alaska 30 November 2011 FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to survey results from 41 international scientists published in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature. Permafrost thaw will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation, say the authors, but the effect on climate will be 2.5 times bigger because emissions include methane, which has a greater effect on warming than carbon dioxide.

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Eurekalert.org - UN overhaul required to govern planet's life support system: Experts

Public release date: 29-Nov-2011
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/uoc-ead112811.php

University of Cambridge

A University of Cambridge study, which set out to investigate DNA methylation in the human heart and the 'missing link' between our lifestyle and our health, has now mapped the link in detail across the entire human genome.

The new data collected greatly benefits a field that is still in its scientific infancy and is a significant leap ahead of where the researchers were, even 18 months ago.

Researcher Roger Foo explains: "By going wider and scanning the genome in greater detail this time - we now have a clear picture of the 'fingerprint' of the missing link, where and how epigenetics in heart failure may be changed and the parts of the genome where diet or environment or other external factors may affect outcomes."

The study originally began investigating the differences in DNA methylation found in the human heart. Researchers compared data from a small number of people with end-stage cardiomyopathy who were undergoing heart transplantation, and the healthy hearts of age-matched victims of road traffic accidents.

DNA methylation leaves indicators, or "marks", on the genome and there is evidence that these "marks" are strongly influenced by external factors such as the environment and diet. The researchers have found that this process is different in diseased and normal hearts. Linking all these things together suggest this may be the "missing link" between environmental factors and heart failure.

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panorientnews - Fukushima Radiation Risks "Severely Underestimated": Greenpeace

Published on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 by PanOrient News

http://www.panorientnews.com/en/news.php

TOKYO -- Greenpeace today renewed its demand for the Japanese government to keep its nuclear reactors offline as simulation maps of potential accidents at Japan’s nuclear plants - used in the development of nuclear emergency response efforts - "are completely inadequate, and have not been updated since the Fukushima disaster."

Following a Greenpeace freedom of information request on November 25, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) released SPEEDI simulations of the radioactive contamination spread from all nuclear plants in Japan. Greenpeace said these maps show only extremely low releases of radioactivity over a 10km area around the plants in the event of meltdown, making any emergency response plan based on them totally insufficient should another severe disaster like the Fukushima Daiichi crisis occur.

The simulations released under FOI to Greenpeace were made to support emergency preparedness drills of local and central government authorities. They calculate the concentration of radioactivity in the air, contamination on the ground and dose to the population within a range of 10km. Based on these maps, drills on evacuation or sheltering of the population, or distribution of iodine pills are organized.

“The simulation of radioactive releases from the Ohi reactor for example, is scandalously inadequate. It foresees a radiation release in the order of 10,000 times less severe than what could happen during a major incident,” said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International Nuclear Campaigner. “Similar over-optimistic scenarios have been used for reactors all over Japan. Hoping for the best is absolutely the wrong way to devise an emergency response plan.”

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Naomi Klein - To Conservatives, Climate Change is Trojan Horse to Abolish Capitalism

By Naomi Klein, The Nation

Posted on November 27, 2011, Printed on November 28, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate

The following article first appeared on the Web site of the Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for its email newsletters. 

There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row.

He introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he ran for county commissioner in Maryland’s Carroll County because he had come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were actually “an attack on middle-class American capitalism.” His question for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late June, is this: “To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?”

Here at the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, the premier gathering for those dedicated to denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, this qualifies as a rhetorical question. Like asking a meeting of German central bankers if Greeks are untrustworthy. Still, the panelists aren’t going to pass up an opportunity to tell the questioner just how right he is.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who specializes in harassing climate scientists with nuisance lawsuits and Freedom of Information fishing expeditions, angles the table mic over to his mouth. “You can believe this is about the climate,” he says darkly, “and many people do, but it’s not a reasonable belief.” Horner, whose prematurely silver hair makes him look like a right-wing Anderson Cooper, likes to invoke Saul Alinsky: “The issue isn’t the issue.” The issue, apparently, is that “no free society would do to itself what this agenda requires…. The first step to that is to remove these nagging freedoms that keep getting in the way.”

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AFP - Climate Change Denial Still Runs Strong in US

Published on Monday, November 28, 2011 by Agence France Presse

http://www.afp.com/afpcom/en

On the US political stage, skepticism and denial of climate change are as popular as ever, and experts say that world talks which opened Monday in Durban, South Africa are unlikely to turn the tide.

But while a binding deal on harmful carbon output remains elusive by the world's second biggest polluter after China, some small signs of progress have emerged at the state and individual levels.

Last month, the most populous US state, California, approved rules for a carbon market that would start in 2013, with the goal of cutting emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Previous attempts to create a cap and trade system to stem pollution at the federal level have failed due to concerns it would cause skyrocketing energy costs, a particularly bruising prospect in an already wobbly economy.

Also in October, a prominent climate skeptic whose research was funded in part by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers' foundation announced he had found that mainstream projections of climate change were correct and unbiased.

"We confirm that over the last 50 years, temperature has risen 0.9 degrees Celsius, or 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the same number that the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says," physicist Richard Muller, director of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, told lawmakers.

Muller said he hoped other climate skeptics would agree with his work, but his newfound stance -- accepted by the vast majority of scientists -- remains rogue, particularly among Republicans seeking to replace President Barack Obama in 2012.

Standout Republican Jon Huntsman -- who ranks lowest in the polls -- may have summed up the differences best when he tweeted earlier this year: "To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."

Indeed, many have. Seeking to drum up conservative support, the other Republican candidates have championed their doubts about human-caused climate change in recent debates just as vigorously as they have called for the return of waterboarding for terror suspects.

The entire nation is divided on the issue, according to the latest Gallup poll which shows 53 percent of Americans see global warming as a very or somewhat serious threat, down 10 percent from two years earlier.

"We have got a big problem, domestically, in terms of climate reality," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

When lawmakers cannot agree that climate change is a problem for which solutions must be sought, gridlock ensues, according to Democratic lawmaker Henry Waxman.

"During this Congress, the Republican-controlled House has voted 21 times to block actions to address climate change," he said at a hearing this month. "History will look back on this science denial with profound regret."

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NRDC - Limerick Nuclear Plant’s Re-Licensing Application Circumvents Safety Analysis Requirements

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

November 28, 2011

NRDC Files Petitions to Intervene in the Limerick Nuclear Plant Operating License Renewal Application, Citing Obsolete Accident Mitigation Study

WASHINGTON - November 28 - Exelon Generation, the owner of the Limerick nuclear power plant outside of Philadelphia, is seeking federal re-licensing of its plant without updating a 1980s-era accident mitigation study, due to an inappropriate exemption received from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), according to petitions filed last week by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“The tragedy in Japan has resulted in a hard look at the safety of nuclear plants worldwide and is providing critical new information that can help prevent future disasters. We need to learn from that failure, not ignore it,” said Christopher Paine, director of the nuclear program at NRDC. “The Limerick nuclear power plant’s safety analysis for mitigating unlikely but severe accidents is decades out-of-date. Re-licensing it now without a fresh analysis of potential safety upgrades would be a reckless decision, especially given that the current operating licenses for these twin units don’t expire until 2024 and 2029. There is ample time to take a fresh look at safety improvements.”

The NRDC petitions contend that Exelon’s license renewal application is deficient because it relies on outdated and insufficient safety and risk information and fails to fully consider the alternatives to re-licensing Limerick as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

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Eliván Martínez - Monsanto's Caribbean experiment

Eliván Martínez   
The Center for Investigative Journalism, 21 November 2011

http://cpipr.org/inicio/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=271

*The largest producer of transgenic seeds in the world is leasing some of the best agricultural lands on the Island [of Puerto Rico] with a pattern of questionable legality, while receiving incentives from the Fortuño administration.

When environmentalist Juan Rosario traveled to an Amish religious community in Iowa, to learn to make compost, he was surprised that they had a laboratory and the services of an expert in chemistry. What was a scientist doing in a place where people live far from technology and practice ecological farming with the simplest of methods?

An Amish dressed in their style, with a wide-brimmed black hat, white shirt, and black pants and black jacket, pointed toward a large cornfield on a nearby farm. "The scientist helps us verify that pollen from genetically modified corn does not contaminate our crops," he told Juan Rosario. "It's the same corn that you develop in Salinas." [Salinas is a small municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico] 

Puerto Rico, laboratory for corn, sorghum, cotton and transgenic soybeans

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Science Daily - Support for Climate Policy Linked to People's Perceptions About Scientific Agreement Regarding Global Warming

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111121115102.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2011) — People who believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about global warming tend to be less certain that global warming is happening and less supportive of climate policy, researchers at George Mason, San Diego State, and Yale Universities report in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found near unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human-caused global warming is happening.

This new George Mason University study, however, using results from a national survey of the American public, finds that many Americans believe that most climate scientists actually disagree about the subject.

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Tom Weis - Now Is the Time to Fight the Keystone Pipeline

Published on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by the Boulder Daily Camera

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_19401172

by Tom Weis

Everyone who helped slow down TransCanada's "Keystone XL" tar sands juggernaut -- rural farmers and ranchers, Native Nations, organized labor, elders, faith leaders, youth, environmentalists and others who protested at the White House this summer and fall -- should be proud of what we have accomplished. By bravely standing together and uniting our voices against Big Oil, we forced President Obama to react to our demands. His decision to delay a decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 election is a testament to the power of the people.

But let's not kid ourselves: opponents of Keystone XL have "won" nothing, save more time to organize. Now is not the time for victory celebrations, but for redoubling our efforts to beat back this lethal energy scheme. When you have your opponent staggered and against the ropes, you don't back off and let them recover their strength. You keep on coming until you've landed the knock out punch.

President Obama's punt on Keystone XL needs to be called out for what it is: an act of political cowardice. This deeply cynical political ploy was designed to placate both his environmental base and the oil lobby. He shrewdly calculated that throwing environmental groups a bone in the form of more studies would be enough to win back their support. Since when did we start giving presidents a pass on making tough decisions until after Election Day?

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Robert Kennedy Jr - Big Carbon's Sock Puppets Declare War on America and the Planet

Huffington Post,  11/25/11

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/cleantech-_b_1112793.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=112511&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

It's now become de rigueur among the radical right wing rhetoricians to characterize any government support of America's green energy sector as wasteful, fruitless, and scandalous. They greeted with glee the collapse of the government supported solar company, Solyndra, America's first major casualty in our race with China to dominate the "new energy" economy. With Solyndra dying on the battlefield -- its marketplace choking on inexpensive Chinese solar panels -- the right wing's response was to hoist the white flag and declare defeat in the war for global cleantech leadership. That brand of "Can't Do" cowardice is a boon to the carbon and nuclear power incumbents who fund so much of the right wing's activities -- but it's bad for America.

Leveraging the aberrant Solyndra bankruptcy, these groups have launched an orchestrated series of attacks against the renewables sector by trying to discredit other companies, even those that are driving America forward with innovative solutions that actually do compete on a global basis. For example, last month, Fox News ran a story insinuating that SunPower received a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch project because of its political connections Congressman George Miller. The story also suggested that SunPower was struggling financially and posed another risk to taxpayers -- a la Solyndra. The truth is that SunPower is one of America's strongest solar manufacturing companies and Mr. Miller had nothing to do with the company receiving a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch Project. To Fox News and other right wing media sources, the facts meant very little. Their intent is only to suggest wrong-doing in an attempt to undermine the Obama Administration and its clean energy goals.

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Eurekalert.org - UN overhaul required to govern planet's life support system: Experts

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/essp-uor112111.php
Earth System Science Partnership 

Needed to avert environmental disaster, reform of international organizations at scale rivalling post-WW II era

		IMAGE: This is the cover of one of five policy briefs issued today by the Earth System Science Partnership. Click here for more information.

Reducing the risk of potential global environmental disaster requires a "constitutional moment" comparable in scale and importance to the reform of international governance that followed World War II, say experts preparing the largest scientific conference leading up to next June's Rio+20 Earth Summit.

Stark increases in natural disasters, food and water security problems and biodiversity loss are just part of the evidence that humanity may be crossing planetary boundaries and approaching dangerous tipping points. An effective environmental governance system needs to be instituted soon, according to independent experts commissioned by organizers of the huge “Planet Under Pressure” conference in London March 26-29, 2012.

As policy-makers gather in Durban, South Africa, for the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Planet Under Pressure consortium today released the first five of nine policy briefs on key issues. The briefs deal with biodiversity and ecosystem services, food and water security, interconnected risks and solutions, and a topic common to all: reforming environmental governance from the local to the global level.

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