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Climate Impacts Poised to Decimate Human and Earth Systems, says Leaked IPCC Draft

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Leaked draft of UN panel’s global review of future impacts from global warming predicts system break-downs across the board.
By Jon Queally / Common Dreams

A draft of a global scientific review on how human and natural systems are expected to respond to the growing threat of climate change has been leaked and its contents—though not wholly unexpected to those who have followed climate science news in recent years—are nonetheless both alarming and devastating.

Titled, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, the leaked document is the draft version of the second installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest review of the global scientific consensus on the global warming and climate change.   [Read more…]

Millions Against Monsanto: Five Lessons from the Battle Against GMOs

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By Ronnie Cummins / Common Dreams

Twenty years after the controversial introduction of unlabeled and untested genetically engineered foods and crops, opposition to GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) and Monsanto has created one of the largest netroots-grassroots movements in the U.S.

There are arguably more important issues facing us today than the battle against Frankenfoods. The climate crisis and corporate control over the government and media come to mind. But the rapidly growing anti-GMO Movement illustrates the powerful synergy that can develop from the combined use of social media, marketplace pressure and political action. Recent developments in this sector indicate that out-of-control corporations, media, politicians and the proverbial “one percent” can be outsmarted and outmaneuvered. And quite possibly defeated.   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: October 2013 – Fires Burn Down Australia

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By John Lawrence

Australia has had its hottest year on record, and the warm temperatures combined with dry conditions have sent over 100 wildfires whipping across the southeastern Australian state of New South Wales. The fires have caused a deep haze to descend over Sydney, Australia’s largest city, and spurred the deployment of more than 1500 firefighters across the region. Hundreds of homes were either burned or damaged. The fires impacted 82 of Australia’s parks and protected areas, including the Blue Mountains, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. More than 311,000 acres were burned in New South Wales, and damage is set to exceed $100 million.

The newly reopened NASA Earth Observatory reported that temperatures up to 93°F and winds gusting to 56 mph helped fan the flames. Conditions over the past six months also played a key role. This past September was Australia’s hottest on record and kept the country on pace for a record-breaking year. Average temperatures in New South Wales were a whopping 6.1°F above the September norm. It was the country’s warmest 12-month period on record as well. Maximum temperatures were even more extreme, measuring 8.3°F above normal. The fires also came unusually  early — October is still the springtime in Australia as Australia is south of the equator and has seasons opposite to ours. Springtime or no, the region was primed to burn. The hotter summer months are still ahead!   [Read more…]

Controversial Privatization Expert Hired by Interim Mayor Todd Gloria

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By Doug Porter

While many San Diegans are focused on the election promises of the four major candidates contending for top job at city hall, interim Mayor Todd Gloria’s made one move that could have a serious impact on the conversations taking place about services and neighborhood.

Fox 5 San Diego reports the iMayor has retained the services of former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith (no relation to the City Attorney) as an efficiency expert.

Known as an expert in privatizing city governments, his claim to fame comes via aggressive programs government services and selling them out to the private sector.   [Read more…]

Nathan Fletcher, The Magic Environmentalist: A Case Study in Machine Versus Movement Politics

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By Jim Miller

If the environment matters to you and you had to choose between a candidate with a 48% lifetime voting record on environmental issues from the California League of Conservation Voters and a 38% lifetime voting record from the Sierra Club or a candidate with an 88% voting record on environmental issues, you’d think the choice would be clear.

That is, of course, unless this choice involves Nathan Fletcher, the magic environmentalist, whose husky whispers of promise and inside game voodoo can make uncomfortable facts disappear like dust in the wind.

Last week San Diego Politico posted an interesting piece on how the San Diego League of Conservation Voters’ endorsement process fell prey to the Fletcher fairy dust as they handed him their endorsement despite the horrible lifetime voting record of 48% he has earned from their own organization.   [Read more…]

Jack-o-Lanterns Illuminate the Luxury in Our Lives

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Did you ever consider yourself lucky because you can carve a pumpkin instead of eating it?

By   / OtherWords

Every time I see a jack-o-lantern, I remember a conversation with my friend Kate Chumo. I met her in her home country of Kenya. We were talking about a favorite Kenyan food called uji, a fermented millet porridge.

“Do you know what we do with millet in the U.S.?” I asked. “We sell it as bird seed and feed it to birds.”

“That reminds me of what you do with pumpkins at Halloween,” she replied.

Has it ever occurred to you that we grow piles of pumpkins, which are a food, carve faces in them, and throw them away? We also produce mounds of millet, a nutritious grain that people can and do eat, and feed it to the birds.   [Read more…]

RECALL? Legislators Lorena Gonzalez, Ben Hueso, Other Latinos Targeted by ‘Free California’ Group

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By Doug Porter

Emboldened by recent recall efforts in Colorado, ex-Minuteman types have joined with guns rights advocates to form Free California, a “grassroots” organization targeting elected Latino officials in the state legislature.

Ostensibly the recall petition drives are being organized in response to sweeping gun control measures recently signed by California Governor Jerry Brown. Legislators on their hit list include Sens. Norma Torres, D-Chino, and Ben Hueso, D-Chula Vista; Assemblywomen Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, and Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton; and Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles.

The group says its targeting lawmakers in swing districts, especially those who were put into office in special elections.   [Read more…]

Urban Design for Climate Change- The Third Way

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Ideas for linking urban design and healthy communities

By Jim Bliesner

Local Woodbury Architecture School students in the graduate Landscape Urbanism program under Professor Rene Peralta have undertaken to develop designs for the “Greater Logan Heights” area to link urban design and healthy communities. The question raised by the student’s designs is whether community level efforts can qualify as strategies for reducing CO2 levels.

The idea is that reducing carbon emissions does not just need to be about electric cars, modified freeways and bullet trains but can in fact be the impetus for making our communities more livable. Sound ecological urban design can both achieve carbon reductions and make our communities more walkable and healthy according to the students.   [Read more…]

Protests Sweep Canada Following Paramilitary Assault on Indigenous Fracking Blockade

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‘Indigenous communities like the Elsipogtog First Nation are on the frontlines of defending water and the land for everyone.’

By Sarah Lazare / Common Dreams

Protests are sweeping Canada following Thursday’s assault by paramilitary-style police on members of indigenous Elsipogtog Mi’kmaq First Nation and local residents as they blockaded a New Brunswick fracking exploration site.

The group had barricaded a road near the town of Rexton in rural New Brunswick since September 30 to block shale gas exploration by SWN Resources Canada, a subsidiary of the Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co, that is moving forward without the community’s consent or consultation.   [Read more…]

Sen. Sanders: ‘Global Warming Is a Far More Serious Problem Than Al Qaeda’

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In new interview with Playboy, the Vermont senator laments the collapsed middle class, corporate power.

By Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams

In a newly published interview, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) blasts the “unfettered capitalism” that has collapsed the middle class, and the corporate power fueling climate change, which poses a “far more serious problem than Al Qaeda.”

Sanders speaking about the government shutdown’s impacts. (Photo: AFGE/cc/flickr) Speaking with economics writer Jonathan Tasini for the interview with Playboy, the 72-year-old Independent senator said that “one of the untold stories of our time is the collapse of the American middle class.” It’s due, in part, to “the decline of trade unions,” which means that workers “have less power to negotiate contracts and less political clout.”

It’s a system that has brought immense inequality, he   [Read more…]

A Short Lived Victory for Barrio Logan

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Maritime Industry Ramps Up Anti-Residents Referendum

By Brent E. Beltrán

The residents of San Diego’s neglected Barrio Logan neighborhood gained a significant win Tuesday over maritime industry’s attempt to derail the community plan update. On a 5-4 party line vote Democratic members of the San Diego City Council held firm in their resolve to do what is right for the people who live in Barrio Logan.

This was the second and final vote the city council made to implement the updated Barrio Logan Community Plan, the first significant update since 1978.

Over time the new plan will help separate unhealthy industry and businesses away from residential areas and create a buffer zone of non-polluting businesses between homes and those enterprises that are toxic to the neighborhood.   [Read more…]

Are Utility Companies Out to Destroy Solar’s ‘Rooftop Revolution’?

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In California, customers who install solar systems and battery arrays are finding themselves cut off from grid

By Jon Queally/Common Dreams

In the nation’s largest state, California, the major utility companies are trying to limit growth.

Of rooftop solar panels, that is.

According to reporting by Bloomberg, the state’s three largest utilities—Edison International, PG&E Corp. and Sempra Energy—are “putting up hurdles” to homeowners who have installed sun-powered energy systems, especially those with “battery backups wired to solar panels,” in order to slow the spread of what has become a threat to their dominant business model.   [Read more…]

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