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Climate Artists Commit ‘Brandalism’ to Expose Corporate Hijacking of COP21

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‘The multinationals responsible for climate change can keep green-washing their destructive business models, but the communities directly impacted by them are silenced.’

By Sarah Lazare / CommonDreams

As the French state cracks down on public protests, a group of artists has devised a creative—and clandestine—way to illustrate public outrage at what they call the “corporate takeover” of the ongoing COP21 United Nations climate talks in Paris.

Naming their campaign “Brandalism,” over 80 artists from 19 countries have plastered the French capital with 600 unauthorized pieces of art taking the form of spoof advertisements to critique the role of multinationals, from AirFrance to Dow Chemical, in the summit.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Climate Action Plan: Too Little, Too Late? Too Much, Too Soon?

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Plans to address the issues surrounding climate change are getting top billing in the news this week.

San Diego’s City Council is poised to approve a climate action plan full of ambitious goals and may be short on actual means to achieve those goals. Representatives from around the planet are meeting in Paris over the coming days, hoping to gain consensus on a strategy to steer the world’s economies away from fossil fuel dependence.

Today I’ll report and comment on the latest developments on San Diego’s Action Plan and the challenges it faces, even as almost the entire local political establishment pays it lip service.   [Read more…]

So a Right Wing Nut Job with a Gun Walks into a Planned Parenthood Office…

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Friday’s shootout at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs left three people dead, nine people wounded and right-wingers scrambling to distance themselves from an act of terrorism.

Misogyny, alienation and insanity were likely driving forces behind the actions of the 59-year-old white male who surrendered to police after the five hour seize. From what I’ve been able to ascertain, he had no ties to organized hate groups.

As the media and their sources in law enforcement have proclaimed the dozen or so “lone wolf” attacks in recent years to have been inspired by radical Islam,” it would appear what happened in Colorado Springs was a lone wolf attack inspired by radical right-wing righteousness.   [Read more…]

Nothing or Everything Changes After Paris

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There has been much to be dismayed about in the wake of the horrible Paris (and Beirut) attacks, from the carnage itself to the ugly xenophobia it aroused in American politics to the sheer stupidity of the eternal return of the same that is the bipartisan hegemony on foreign policy. The answer for everything is always an eye for an eye until the whole world is blind with little to no intelligent reflection on the blunders that got us here—that might mean a fundamental rethinking of our role in the world rather than yet another knee-jerk response.

Perhaps the best piece I’ve seen on the phenomenon of ISIS came out months before the Paris attacks in The Guardian. In “Iraq Blowback: ISIS Rise Manufactured by Insatiable Oil Addiction,” Nafeez Ahmed gives a nice pocket history of how ISIS, the “Islamist Frankenstein,” is the product of the West’s “co-optation of Gulf states’ jihadists.”

More specifically, Ahmed starts by going back to the Bush administration where senior officials decided, “to pursue hair-brained ambitions to re-engineer the region through the de facto ethno-sectarian” conflict. Thus began years of ill-conceived covert operations amidst the chaos of post-war Iraq, none of them working particularly well.   [Read more…]

Pinyon-Juniper Forests: An Ancient Vision Disturbed

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Standing in a pinyon-juniper forest on a high slope above Cave Valley not far from Ely, Nevada, I am lost in an ancient vision. It is a vision born under sublime skies stretching above wide, flat valleys bounded by the dramatic mountains of the Great Basin. The vision grows with the rising flames of morning in the east. The night was cold, but clear, and the sun brings a welcome warmth. When the sun crests the mountains, red and orange clouds stream across the sky while shadows pull back from the valley floor to reveal pronghorn antelope dancing through the sage brush. A few ridge lines away, the clatter of talus accompanies the movement of bighorn sheep. The slap and crack of bighorn rams clashing their heads together echoes through the valley.   [Read more…]

Climate Change, Republican Troglodytes and Price Gouging

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If you look past the preordained stories about Black Friday either being a success, disaster or nothing-burger for shoppers, the coming climate summit in Paris is the big story of this holiday weekend.

The United Nations meeting, Nov. 30-Dec 11, will discuss the wording of an international treaty to try to prevent climate change getting out of hand. Prognosticators are saying we should expect an agreement pointing in the right direction, but lacking enough enforceable specifics to really solve the complex problem of saving the planet from ourselves.

Much of what needs to be done will end up being the task of local and regional governments. California Gov. Jerry Brown has been brokering his own international climate agreement with regional governments, including states and provinces in Brazil, Germany and Mexico. They’ve agreed to cut their emissions 80 percent or more by mid-century.   [Read more…]

Jerry Brown’s Moment Arrives with the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris

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By Keith Fowler / SD350.org 

On the eve of a critical UN global climate summit in Paris in December, Governor Jerry Brown, a self-described environmentalist and green economy advocate, needs to bring California’s economic policies into alignment with his strong climate change statements.

Governor Brown has been sending citizens mixed messages.  Despite signing an Executive Order earlier this year calling for a reduction in California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, he continues to refuse to place a state moratorium on the dangerous practice of fracking. Despite declaring at the Vatican in July of this year that climate change is serious enough to be “about extinction,” Governor Brown still accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Big Oil, an industry that continues on its mission to extract and emit every last barrel of oil regardless of ecological consequences.

President Obama’s invitation to the governor to join him as part of the U.S. delegation traveling to Paris offers Brown the opportunity for bold action. Obama’s recent decisions to halt further construction on the Keystone XL pipeline and to attend the Paris conference are both evidence of his desire to be seen as a promoter of green, clean energy and climate change mitigation. For Brown the same opportunity beckons.   [Read more…]

Thanks to Conservation Efforts, the ‘Butterfly Highway’ Saw a Ton More Traffic This Year

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By Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos

Earlier this year it came to our attention that since 1990, almost 1 billion monarch butterflies have vanished. That number was 90 percent of previous peaks in monarch populations. In reaction to this staggering number, conservationists in North America began working in their regions to create something called the “butterfly highway”.

The idea was to make safe sections, specifically in the U.S. where monarch populations would be able to leave eggs and be safe on the migrations from Canada to Mexico. Good news, as environmentalists are touting these conservation measures are quickly showing improvements for the monarch.   [Read more…]

Why SeaWorld Can’t Build a Hotel at its Location on Mission Bay

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Coming off a trouncing over the last 2 years because of the Orca circuses, SeaWorld has announced that it now plans on building a hotel and resort at its location on the southern rim of Mission Bay.  Its hope is that declining attendances and revenues will be halted with a branded hotel right there on its site with its aquatic theme.

Yet, there is trouble afoot for these plans. SeaWorld needs to re-appraise the project, for the last time a major hotel was planned for that area of Mission Bay – it ended in disaster. In the early 1980s, Ramada wanted to build a resort – and the city had given the go-ahead.

But when it came time to begin construction, it was uncovered that a toxic landfill sat beneath all that sand. The old Mission Bay Landfill.   [Read more…]

North Of The Fence: Water Rates, Dead Dolphins and More Mexicans Leaving U.S.

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Water Rate Hikes

On Tuesday, November 17, members of the San Diegans for Fair Water Rates Coalition rallied at the San Diego Civic Concourse Plaza asking the SD City Council to vote against the recycled water unitary rate proposal. They lost. The City Council approved a five-year, 40 percent increase to the price of city drinking water overall and then also approved the recycled water rate with a vote of 7-2, Alvarez and Kersey voting against it.

Imperial Beach

Vince Farnsworth at the San Diego Reader reported three dead dolphins washed up on the shores of Imperial Beach in the past month. Investigations are underway to determine whether their deaths were due to Navy sonar exercises. According to Earthjustice, there are only 323 bottlenose dolphins known to live in California coastal waters.   [Read more…]

The Citizens’ Plan Offers San Diegans a Say in Tourism

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Oh, what a tangled web we weave in San Diego. Tourism tax dollars go into private coffers. Hotel owners snap their fingers and elected officials bow down before them. Our local politicians say and the media convey our most pressing needs as a meeting hall and a place to play football. The mayor fills potholes for TV cameras to make citizens feel better about it all.

The spoilers in all this have been lawsuits. The biggest one of them all is likely coming  to trial shortly after the first of the year. San Diego’s hoteliers have spent millions of tourism tax dollars defending the indefensible. Their attempts to shoot the messenger, both in the courts and in the media seem doomed to fail.

It may sound a little complicated, but there is a way to straighten this mess out.  A proposed initiative that would change the current system rolls out today, endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters, and a host of others to be made public at an upcoming press conference.   [Read more…]

Nuclear Shutdown News – October 2015

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By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those who are working to create a nuclear free future.

This October I returned to the place I come from, southeast Connecticut on Long Island Sound, off the Atlantic Ocean. The region promotes and prides itself as “The Submarine Capital of the World.”

The General Dynamics Electric Boat Company in Groton, CT, has built almost all the nation’s nuclear powered submarines. These include each and every of the Trident subs, which along with nuclear missiles and bombs constitute the US “strategic forces.”

Each Trident carries nuclear missiles, each one consisting of multiple warheads that can be independently targeted.

Thus Tridents are submersible Armageddons.   [Read more…]

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