By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press
Oyster Creek – oldest US nuke keeps shutting itself down
On April 28 patch.com ran “NRC Oyster Creek Nuclear Has Substantial Safety Problems.” Located in New Jersey, the Oyster Creek nuclear plant is the nation’s oldest (sometimes) operating nuke. It started up in late 1969, and is now 45 years old. US nuclear plants were designed to last only 40 years. [Read more…]
By Jill Richardson
I recently checked out an upscale yoga studio here in Madison, Wisconsin and discovered a new and disturbing trend: boxed water.
Boxed water?
OK, I’ve heard of boxed wine — and maybe even drunk a little. But water?
[Read more…]
As I recently wrote about, Balboa Park is a city treasure, enjoyed by locals and visitors alike. It is also home to many high-speed roads which greatly diminish the quality of the park, use large amounts of high-value land, and pose health dangers immediate (being crushed by a car) and long-term (developing asthma and other disease due to very poor air quality in San Diego). It is time to eliminate the most superfluous high-speed road in Balboa Park – Florida Drive. [Read more…]
By Bill McKibben / Daily Kos
California’s the center of the new energy revolution—if there was ever any doubt about that, Elon Musk’s announcement of his new home battery from Tesla’s design studio in Hawthorne settled the question. Pushed by the goad of the state’s progressive energy policies, and pulled by the chance to lead in the planet’s greatest energy transition, Silicon Valley is seeing a clean-power goldrush.
And California’s also the center of the climate crisis—one center, anyway. When the state decided not even to carry out the regular May 1 measurement of the snowpack in the Sierras because there was no snowpack to measure, it told the story of the ever-deepening drought in dramatic form.
So now’s the moment for the state of California to become the center of the divestment movement… [Read more…]
Governor Jerry Brown is leading the nation and perhaps even the world in his efforts to do something about climate change and global warming which is causing epic drought conditions in California.
He has mandated that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced to 40 percent below 1990 levels over the next 15 years. Brown called this the most aggressive benchmark enacted by a government in North America. All well and good.
But the Governor, formerly known as Governor Moonbeam, has done little to refrain Big Oil and Big Ag from using most of the water in the state. [Read more…]
Dear University of Arizona Class of 2015:
The Alumni Association of our beloved U of A asked past graduates to share words of wisdom with you.
My first thought is to give forth with some lofty advice like “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
Now that’s definitely something for you to consider but, due to the troubles in the world facing your generation, you’ve got some serious work to do. [Read more…]
By Kathleen Connell and Jaye Whittaker
As we write, a few conservatives on the Supreme Court are still wringing their hands about the idea of ruling that marriage equality of LGBT citizens is indeed covered under the Constitution. Some Justices take a misty-eyed backward look, with fondness, at “millennia” of denial of this basic human right for LGBT families. In addition to lack of fairness, if they decide marriage is only between a male/female heterosexual dyad, then 1,400 economic and legal rights will be denied to millions of spouses and their families across the United States. In other words, the LGBT community will still stand on the losing end of an unlevel economic playing field, compared to their heterosexual counterparts. [Read more…]
Groups Demand Investigation of USDA
‘It is imperative that the USDA maintains scientific integrity and does not allow for harassment, censorship or suppression of findings that counter the interests of industry,’ say farmworker, environmental, and food safety groups
By Sarah Lazare / Common Dreams
More than 25 farmworker, environmental, and food safety organizations sent an open letter this week to the U.S. Department of Agriculture demanding that the agency investigate reports that its scientists are facing retaliation and suppression of their research on controversial neonicotinoid insecticides that pose a danger to pollinator and human health. [Read more…]
Without regulations for large-scale farmers, drought crisis cannot be solved, says expert
By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams
For the first time ever, California’s state water board on Wednesday approved mandatory water conservation rules in the face of a historic drought, now entering its fourth year. But the regulations, which will require water usage cutbacks of up to 36 percent for some communities, are letting the worst environmental offender in the state—the agriculture industry—off the hook.
“It’s a double-standard. It’s not going to be adequate to fix our water management problems,” Adam Scow, California director of Food & Water Watch, told Common Dreams. “Overall, our state has failed to properly manage our water rights.” [Read more…]
San Diego is becoming a glamorous plantation.
Its people fight for a degree of control over their lives and are left to fight among themselves over whether they get sidewalk repair or a new stadium. A water shortage is not because we grow avocados in a desert, it is because we take too many showers for too many minutes.
Homelessness is a problem because lazy people don’t want to work. If they got themselves jobs they could buy a condo in Mission Valley starting at the low 400s. [Read more…]
In today’s column I’m looking at the latest and best bit of right wing paranoia, Corinthian College’s political connections, a study about the causes of rising tuition for public higher education, an officer-involved fatality in Mira Mesa and a whole lotta dead trees…
An inter-agency training exercise set for this summer is stoking fears of an invasion or military take-over of Texas. And maybe even southern California.
Yes, folks, this is the Big One. After six years of hysteria over Death Panels, Sharia Law, and Big Brother coming to get your guns, the wingnut class has deemed Jade Helm 15 to be the Obamapocalypse. [Read more…]
April Showers Turn Violent
As April drew to a close, drenching rain expanded across the Southeast states, bringing the threat of flooding and travel delays. Strong thunderstorms were also a concern for Florida.
April has been a particularly wet month across the Southeast due to several slow-moving storms that soaked the region over the past several weeks. Mobile, Alabama, has been one of the wettest cities in the entire country last month from a series of storms – recording over 13 inches of rain. [Read more…]
