» 2008 » July

Once oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly right-wing media hosts had to prove their populist cred by devoting a portion of every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite me on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: “disaster capitalism.” It usually goes well–until it doesn’t.

For instance, “independent conservative” radio host Jerry Doyle and I were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy insurance companies and inept politicians when this happened: “I think I have a quick way to bring the prices down,” Doyle announced. “We’ve invested $650 billion to liberate a nation of 25 million people. Shouldn’t we just demand that they give us oil? There should be tankers after tankers backed up like a traffic jam getting into the Lincoln Tunnel, the Stinkin’ Lincoln, at rush hour with thank-you notes from the Iraqi government…. Why don’t we just take the oil? We’ve invested it liberating a country. I can have the problem solved of gas prices coming down in ten days, not ten years.”

There were a couple of problems with Doyle’s plan, of course. The first was that he was describing the biggest stickup in world history. The second, that he was too late: “We” are already heisting Iraq’s oil, or at least are on the cusp of doing so.

Source: www.thenation.com/…

LS » If you aren’t familiar with the work of Naomi Klein then do yourself a favour and check her out.

Their eco-footprint is more than double nation’s poor: study.

The richest 10 per cent of Canadians have nearly two-and-a-half times the environmental impact of the poorest 10 per cent, a new study says.

And, the study argues, climate change policies that ignore this disparity will not only be ineffective, but will make income inequality worse.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study concludes that “the consumption of high-income Canadians is having a very real and damaging effect on the environment.”

The study found that the per capita ecological footprint of the richest 10 per cent of Canadian households is 66 per cent higher than the national average.

Source: www.thetyee.ca/…

LS » I think we all intuitively already know this, but what are we going to do about it?

“In short, if we fail to incorporate differences in environmental impact that are systematically related to income, we risk creating an ineffective policy that has the side effect of imposing disproportionate costs on the low- and moderate-income Canadians who have contributed the least to the problems we are trying to address.”

Americans must not allow global warming deniers to block the policies needed to avert catastrophic climate change. Our future is at stake. 

Conservatives put on a spectacular display of scientific ignorance this month in the U.S. Senate. During the debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would regulate carbon dioxide by setting a cap on emissions and allowing emitters to trade carbon allowances, most Republican senators questioned the reality of human-caused climate change or ignored the climate threat entirely and repeated the talking point that the bill would raise gasoline and electricity prices. It was as if they had been locked in an isolation booth for the past decade.

Conservatives sure are good at staying on message, even one that has no basis in fact. None of their scientific or technological claims is true and most of the economic claims are a wild exaggeration based on studies funded by fossil fuel companies. This may be a defining moment for humanity according to the world’s increasingly desperate climate scientists, but to many conservatives it’s apparently just another moment to score political points at the expense of future generations.

Source: www.salon.com/…

LS » I know that all of the world’s problems wouldn’t be solved if Conservatives were relegated to the dustbin of history, but it is an enticing concept. According to this article we could ALL be relegated to the dustbin of history if we continue to allow anti-science conservatives to have a say in our political processes for the next decade. Get yer brooms out!