Why We Can’t Afford Cheap Gas

(AlterNet.org: Environment) - We can’t let the talk about alternative energy rise and fall with the cost of gas, or the environment and our economy will pay a mighty price.

With the cost of crude oil again nearing the $100-a-barrel mark (even after last week’s financial meltdown) and this summer’s record gas prices in the rearview mirror, automotive executives and industry analysts are already heralding the return of gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. Car makers are rolling out new truck models, and even Republican presidential candidate John McCain, in a new Michigan TV spot, promises to “spur truck sales.” Never mind that only months earlier, these same analysts, as well as auto executives and consumers alike, insisted that the future of the automotive industry lay in more fuel-efficient models like hybrid and electric cars. Now, however, it seems that many involved are slowly slipping back into the pre-$100-per-barrel mindset that was so popular when pump prices were under $4 a gallon and drivers of SUVs and trucks roared down the roads with clean consciences.

But if history is any indication, this period of relief and a possible shift back to gas-guzzling cars must be met with cold-eyed skepticism. Sure, cheaper gas means much needed short-term financial relief. Looking past the next year or two, however, cheaper oil and a resurgence of gas-guzzling vehicles would be seriously detrimental to the United States, as similar oil crises in the past have shown that the periods immediately after a spike in oil prices — not the crises themselves — have arguably inflicted far greater damage on the country. During these relief periods, critical efforts to develop alternative energies and fuel-efficient technologies — begun under the culture of urgency that an energy crisis instills — have been squashed, allowing Americans to revert to the same old habits, tendencies and behaviors that got them into trouble in the first place.

Take, for example, the October 1973 U.S. oil embargo. After a group of African and Middle Eastern countries briefly stopped supplying the United States with oil, prices in early 1974 climbed from $3 to $11 per barrel, setting off a nationwide energy panic and resulting in massive lines at gas stations. In response, President Richard Nixon proposed lowering speed limits on federal and state highways and temporarily banning the sale of gasoline on Sundays. Nixon also announced his “Project Independence,” a set of energy-related recommendations aimed at achieving the quixotic goal of making the United States energy independent by 1980.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: AlterNet.org: Environment, Andy Kroll, Sep. 29, 2008 ]

We Can’t Afford McCain and Palin’s Anti-Science Beliefs

(AlterNet.org: Environment) - Their combined anti-science positions may be devastating for the economy, the environment and our health.

One of the peculiar oversights of the Sarah Palin media blitz is her strong anti-science views. In keeping with her Pentecostal faith and alignment with the far right of the Republican Party, Palin is opposed to stem cell research, declaims evolution, and believes global warming to be a hoax. Of her many controversial qualities, this anti-science ideology may be the most troubling — in fact, devastating — for the economy, ecology, and health.

If the McCain-Palin ticket is elected, we would have the prospect of an administration constantly at odds with scientific advance. As vice-president, Palin would not only be the proverbial “heartbeat away” from the presidency, but the leading contender for the top spot eight years hence.

McCain himself shows some worrisome tendencies as well, supporting the teaching of “intelligent design”– the beard for anti-evolution propaganda — in schools, for example. Overall, the prospect of 8-16 years of this kind of bias sends a chill through the science community, even after years of dealing with the Bush anti-science agenda.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent watchdog group, has documented dozens of cases where the U.S. government has interfered with, undermined, or falsified science in public policy over the last seven years. It is a shocking record, revolving mainly around environmental issues but ranging from abstinence-only AIDS prevention (shown repeatedly to be ineffective) to phony information about breast cancer. Bush cut funding for the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control, among other science agencies, in his final budget. Overall, he has starved non-defense R&D at a time when China, the EU and other rivals are investing vigorously.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: AlterNet.org: Environment, John Tirman, Sep. 23, 2008 ]

Sarah Palin’s Creationism Will Rape the Environment

(AlterNet.org: Environment) - The Bush admin has been a nightmare for the environment — and the nomination of Palin is an insurance policy taken out on its continuation.

Despite the media feeding frenzy, we still may be asking ourselves, “Just who exactly is Sarah Palin?” Mixed in with the Davy-Crockett-meets-SuperMom vignettes — all those moose hunting, ice fishing, snowmobiling, baby-juggling, and hockey-momming moments — we’ve also learned that she doesn’t care much for her former brother-in-law and wasn’t afraid to use her office to go after his job as a state trooper; that she was for the “bridge to nowhere” before she was against it; that she’s against earmarks unless they benefit her constituents; that she can deliver a snappy wisecracking speech, thinks banning books in libraries is okay, considers herself a pit bull with lipstick, and above all else, wants to drill the ever-lovin’ daylights out of every corner of her home state (which John McCain’s handlers have somehow translated into being against Big Oil, since she insisted on a marginally bigger cut of the profits for Alaskans).

 

Oh, and — not that this is very important to Americans or the planet — she now thinks that global warming might possibly be human-made sorta though she didn’t before, despite the fact that the state she governs is on the frontline of climate change. And, of course, she’s a classic right-wing, fundamentalist Christian: against abortion — check; against same-sex marriage — check; against stem-cell research — check; favors teaching Creationism in public schools — check.

 

It’s that last item, her willingness to put Creationism up against the teaching of evolutionary science in the classroom on a he-says-she-says basis, that’s far more revealing of just who our new Republican vice presidential candidate is than we generally assume. It deserves the long, hard look that it hasn’t yet gotten. Most Democrats and progressives tend to think of the teaching of Creationism as a mere sidebar item on their agenda of political don’t-likes, but it’s not. Sarah Palin’s bias towards Creationism is a window into her political soul and a measure of John McCain’s hypocrisy.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: AlterNet.org: Environment, Chip Ward, Tomdispatch.com, Sep. 22, 2008 ]

Van Jones: We Can’t Drill Our Way Out of Our Energy Problems

(AlterNet.org: Environment) - In an electrifying speech, Van Jones explains that we have to invent and invest our way out of the economic and environmental crises.

The following speech was given at Netroots Nation 2008 in Austin, Texas.

I have a little bit of whiplash. Thirty-six hours ago I was in the Arctic with Jimmy Carter. This is not a joke, you all. (Laughter) It sounds like a joke, right? You hear about the black guy in the Arctic with Jimmy Carter? No, I was really … (Laughter)

I was really in the Arctic, man, the abominable snow Negro. No, I was really there. (Laughter) And the reason, so I’m a little bit jet-lagged, but I want you to know, if you didn’t know, it was kind of kept quiet until it was over. But a number of people, huge dignitaries, all got on a boat and went to the Arctic. We spent eight days. Jimmy Carter was there. Madeline Albright. Tom Daschle. Larry Page from Google. But not just liberals and progressives; the head of DuPont was there, eight days on a boat, to look and see if what’s happening with climate change is real. The head of Monsanto was there. We had Republicans and Democrats, young people, old people, state leaders, Catholics, evangelicals.

And I want you to know that after eight days of looking with our own eyes of what’s going on, looking at the glaciers receding, looking at the animals and life up there that’s suffering, watching the actual results and impacts of global warming, that every single person who is a part of that delegation, Left, Right and otherwise, agreed that Al Gore has been right the whole time. Global warming is real.

We have to do something about it. Nobody who goes and spoke at this thing has come to any other conclusion. You need to understand that. This is our moment. This is our opportunity. Before I get to my comments, though, since we’re here, I want to tell you about my personal experience in the Arctic.

First of all, they had us on this boat, man. Lot of people have bad experiences of boats, man. You know, we’re … (Laughter) far back memories, man. I was like, I don’t like this. (Laughter) It was tough, man. And then, boats are not big things. They’re not airplanes. I guess it’s left over from the days of scurvy or something. They’re small. And, OK, I busted my head open, man. I’m serious. I busted my head open on a bulkhead, like the first day, which was not very impressive. (Laughter) So, a little bit woozy.

The other thing that happened was, we had a meeting. We had a delegation, this meeting of the delegation of polar bears. And they’re very polite, the polar bears. And they’re very friendly. The polar bears were not as skinny and scrawny as I expected. They were definitely smaller than they were supposed to be, but they also looked toned, looked pretty healthy.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: AlterNet.org: Environment,  Van Jones, Sep. 20, 2008 ]

What the Chemical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know about Everyday Products

(AlterNet.org: Environment) - The chemical industry has spent years trying to suppress information about a certain chemical. Will Congress help the public know the true dangers?

It takes a lot of nerve to go up against the $3 trillion-a-year global chemical industry.

Ask University of Missouri-Columbia scientists Frederick Vom Saal and Wade Welshons. They’ve been in the industry’s crosshairs for more than a decade, since their experiments turned up the first hard evidence that miniscule amounts of bisphenol A (BPA), an artificial sex hormone and integral component of a vast array of plastic products, caused irreversible changes in the prostates of fetal mice.  

Their findings touched off a steady drumbeat that has led to a ban on BPA-laden baby bottles in Canada, mounting support for a similar ban in the U.S., major retailers pulling plastic products off their shelves, a consumer run on glass baby bottles and a blizzard of scientific reports raising increasingly disturbing questions about the chemical’s dangers at the trace levels to which people are routinely exposed.  

But back in early 1997, when the Missouri team produced its pioneering research on low-dose BPA, challenging the chemical-industrial complex seemed quixotic, even risky. Soon after the report appeared, a scientist from Dow Chemical Company, a major BPA manufacturer, showed up at the Missouri lab, disputed the data and declared, as Vom Saal recalls, “We want you to know how distressed we are by your research.”  

“It was not a subtle threat,” Vom Saal says. “It was really, really clear, and we ended up saying, threatening us is really not a good idea.”  

The Missouri scientists redoubled their investigations of BPA and churned out more evidence of low-dose BPA toxicity to the reproductive systems of test animals. Industry officials and scientist allies fired back, sometimes in nose-to-nose debates at scientific gatherings, sometimes more insidiously.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: AlterNet.org: Environment, Elaine Shann, Sep. 15, 2008 ]

A Telling Palin Scandal: Her Environmental Record

(AlterNet.org: Environment) - Sarah Palin has an environmental policy so toxic it would make George W. Bush blush.

Seen from the air, Sarah Palin’s state is an environmental wonderland. From Anchorage to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, there is a vast landscape of snow-capped peaks, fjords, crystal glaciers, coastal lagoons, wide river deltas and tundra.

The guardian of this wilderness — and Governor of Alaska — has, this week, become one of the most recognisable faces in the world. But behind her beaming smile and wholesome family values is a woman aligned with the big oil and coal firms that are racing to exploit Alaska’s vast energy reserves. In the short term, that has bought her popularity at home.

“I love the woman,” the pilot on our flight shouts over the noise of the engine, “especially what she wants to do with oil, we just have to drill more, there is no alternative. What’s the point of leaving it all in the ground?”

It is a stance that guaranteed John McCain’s new running mate a rapturous reception at the Republican convention this week where the response to the coming energy crisis was a chant of “drill, baby, drill.”

But the woman who could soon be a 72-year-old’s heartbeat away from the United States presidency has an environmental policy so toxic it would make the incumbent, George Bush, blush.

Mr McCain has stressed he is concerned about global warming and has come out against drilling in the Arctic reserve. But, in recent weeks, he has wobbled on the issue. And environmentalists are describing Mrs Palin, who denies climate change is man-made, as “either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading.”

READ MORE HERE [ Source:  AlterNet.org: Environment,  Leonard Doyle, Independent UK, Sep. 10, 2008 ]

Researchers warn of Facebook malware

(vnunet.com, 08 Sep 2008) - A group of Greek security researchers has created a tool to turn Facebook into an attack platform.

The researchers are from the Institute of Computer Science at the Foundation for Research & Technology Hellas, along with a researcher from Singapore’s Institute for Infocomm Research.

In a paper entitled Antisocial Networks (PDF) the researchers demonstrated an application that causes Facebook users to unknowingly participate in denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against other sites.

The ‘Facebot’ tool was disguised as a National Geographic ‘picture of the day’ application which users install into their Facebook profile page, thus allowing it to access account information and request new photos.

When users access the application to view a new photo, they unwittingly become internet attackers.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: vnunet.com, Sept. 8, 2008 ]

We’ve Got One Week Left to Stop One of Bush’s Worst Environmental Attacks

(Alternet.org) - The Endangered Species Act is our primary legal tool for environmental protection.

We have until September 15-about a week-to save the Endangered Species Act.

Not just some species, but the Act itself! Bush administration officials are proposing redefinitions of terms that would allow conservative appointees in federal agencies to virtually the destroy the Act.

Their goal is to allow proposed projects to proceed even if such projects would kill off endangered species or place them or their habitats in jeopardy.

If the changes are not effectively challenged by September 15, they will go into effect, and, Goodbye Species!

Act now: Go to the end of this article for instructions. We need the public to flood the agencies involved with comments opposing the redefinitions and rule changes.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Alternet.org, George Lakoff and Chris Shutes, September 8, 2008 ]

Weird Theology in Wasilla: A Look Inside Sarah Palin’s Pentecostal Church

(Alternet.org) - On June 8, 2008 Palin was publicly blessed, with the "laying on of hands" before six thousand Wasilla area church members, by Head Wasilla Assembly of God Pastor Ed Kalnins and on the same day both Kalnins and Palin described, at a "Masters Commission" ceremony at the Wasilla Assembly of God church, how she had been blessed prior to winning the Alaska governorship by an African cleric known for driving the "spirit of witchcraft" out of a town in Kenya, after which town supposedly crime rates dropped "almost to zero."

Sarah Palin's churches are actively involved in a resurgent movement that was declared heretical by the Assemblies of God in 1949. This is the same 'Spiritual Warfare' movement that was featured in the award winning movie, "Jesus Camp," which showed young children being trained to do battle for the Lord. At least three of four of Palin's churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of this movement, which is referred to as The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit or the New Apostolic Reformation. The movement is training a young "Joel's Army" to take dominion over the United States and the world.

Along with her entire family, Sarah Palin was re-baptized at twelve at the Wasilla Assembly of God in Wasilla, Alaska and she attended the church from the time she was ten until 2002: over two and 1/2 decades. Sarah Palin's extensive pattern of association with the Wasilla Assembly of God has continued nearly up to the day she was picked by Senator John McCain as a vice-presidential running mate.

Palin's dedication to the Wasilla church is indicated by a Saturday, September 7, 2008, McClatchy news service story detailing possibly improper use of state travel funds by Palin for a trip she made to Wasilla, Alaska to attend, on June 8, 2008, both a Wasilla Assembly of God "Masters Commission" graduation ceremony and also a multi-church Wasilla area event known as "One Lord Sunday."

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Alternet.org, Bruce Wilson, September 8, 2008 ]

Pollution Can Make You Fat

(Alternet.org) - Pollution can make children fat, startling new research shows. A groundbreaking Spanish study indicates that exposure to a range of common chemicals before birth sets up a baby to grow up stout, thus helping to drive the worldwide obesity epidemic.

The results of the study, just published -- the first to link chemical contamination in the womb with one of the developing world's greatest and fastest-growing health crises -- carry huge potential implications for public policy around the globe. They undermine recent strictures from the Conservative leader, David Cameron, that blame solely the obese for their own condition.

A quarter of all British adults and a fifth of children are obese -- four times as many as 30 years ago. And so are at least 300 million people worldwide. The main explanation is that they are consuming more calories than they burn. But there is growing evidence that diet and lack of exercise, though critical, cannot alone explain the rapid growth of the epidemic.

It has long been known that genetics give people different metabolisms, making some gain weight more easily than others. But the new study by scientists at Barcelona's Municipal Institute of Medical Research suggests that pollution may similarly predispose people to get fat.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Alternet.org, Geoffrey Lean, The Independent UK, September 8, 2008 ]

Iran announces war games plans

(Reuters) - TEHRAN - Iran's armed forces will begin three days of war games on Monday involving anti-aircraft defense systems, Iranian media said on Sunday.

The exercises will be held amid persistent speculation about a possible U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, which the West and Israel say are part of a clandestine bid to build atomic bombs, despite Tehran's denials.

The ISNA news agency said both Iran's Revolutionary Guards and its regular army would take part in the drills.

"Maneuvers with the participation of anti-aircraft defense systems will be held for three days starting Monday," it said, without giving further details.

The English-language Iran Daily said the aim was to maintain and upgrade the combat readiness of relevant units as well as to "test new weapons and defense plans."

Speculation about a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities has risen since Israel staged an air force exercise in June which was reported to be a simulation of a strike against Iran. Iran says it would hit back if attacked.

An Iranian commander last week said the Iranian air force would hold exercises during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began in Iran on September 2, but it was not immediately clear whether he was referring to the same drills as the ISNA report.

Alongside the regular army, Iran has a Revolutionary Guards force viewed as guardians of the Islamic ruling system. The Guards have a separate command and their own air, sea and land units, but often work with the regular military.

Iran has dismissed reports of possible U.S. or Israeli plans to strike Iran, but says it would respond by attacking U.S. interests and Israel if any such assault was made.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman last week denied reports, based on comments from Israeli defense sources, that Iran had bought Russia's advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system and would get it this year.

There have been conflicting reports about whether Iran was buying the S-300 system. Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said last year Russia had agreed to deliver the missiles to Iran under a signed contract. Russia denied such plans.

Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, says its nuclear program is aimed at making electricity, not bombs. The United States says it wants diplomacy to end the row but has not ruled out military action if that fails.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Reuters ]

(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian and Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Charles Dick)

CDC chief states flu pandemic is coming

(Lacrosse Tribune) - Ready or not, a flu pandemic is coming, says Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gerberding talked about preparing for the pandemic threat at a national conference Thursday at Logistics Health in La Crosse. No one knows when the pandemic is coming or what strain of flu virus will cause it, but it is overdue, she said.

She said she has only two meetings a week at the CDC and one focuses on flu pandemic preparations. “We take it very seriously,” Gerberding said, adding that the national strategy is to “save lives and sustain a civil society” during a pandemic. She said politicians are not talking about a flu pandemic or the bird flu virus, which may or may not be the virus that causes the next pandemic. “No one is talking about it, and it’s not on their radar screen,” Gerberding said. She said CDC officials are closely monitoring the bird flu virus, which has a death rate of 63 percent among the 385 cases reported worldwide since 2003. “It is a moving target, and we have to stay on top of it,” Gerberding said.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Lacrosse Tribune ]

Sarah Palin’s Big, Sleazy Safari

(Alternet.org) - Most people had never heard of Sarah Palin when she was named the Republican VP nominee. But I'd been hearing her name all too often, because I belong to a group called Defenders of Wildlife -- and in her time as governor of Alaska, Palin has used her position as governor of Alaska to ruin the Alaskan wilderness in every way she could.

Her most recent "victory" came on Aug. 26, when Alaska's voters defeated Measure 2, an initiative that would have banned hunting wolves from airplanes for sport.

Palin organized a campaign against Measure 2 and funded it with $400,000 of state money. For most of us, the idea of zooming around in a private airplane over snowbound wilderness just for the chance to spot a terrified wild dog and blow it apart with a high-powered rifle is insane. But there's a whole culture out there in love with the idea. Palin did her part by playing the tired old Alaskan pioneer card, saying that lower-48 naysayers who dared to object to the idea of dive-bombing wildlife didn't "understand rural Alaska."

Alaska isn't really very hard to understand. It consists of a minority that loves the wilderness and an overwhelmingly Republican majority that wants to squeeze all the cash it can get out of the state before the oil dries up, the fish die out and the wildlife disappears. Nowhere else does the Republican formula of manipulating the suckers by playing on their silly hatreds and even sillier vanities play out more clearly than in Alaska.

READ MORE HERE [ Source: Alternet.org, John Dolan, September 2, 2008 ]