WASHINGTON – The closest nuclear power plant to tornado-ravaged Joplin, Mo., was singled out weeks before the storm for being vulnerable to twisters.
via ‘Tornado Alley’ reactor not fully twister-proof – Yahoo! News.
Surprise, surprise! How many US nuclear reactors will be in the way of major storms in the next 3 months, 6 months, year?
Signed, sealed, and delivered:
Chevron’s lobbyists are a Who’s Who of former government officials. DC’s rule of thumb: corporations ensure better access to lawmakers when they put their former colleagues from government on their payroll. Chevron pays the Breaux Lott Leadership Group of the law firm Patton Boggs $135,000 every three months to lobby members of Congress. That means former Senators John Breaux and Trent Lott hobnob with their Senate contemporaries, and ask whatever Chevron tells them to ask for. Chevron has lobbyist Richard Hohlt on retainer, close friend of Karl Rove, and the kingmaker of a monthly gathering of GOP leaders inside DC called the “Off the Record Club.” Chevron pays the law firm Akin Gump $90,000 every three months to take advantage of the firm’s Democratic stars, including Al From, and former top staffers to Senator Max Baucus and Rahm Emanuel.
via Tyson Slocum: Chevron Banks on Profitable Political Agenda.
Obama’s legacy: A third war we have no business fighting. Perhaps he’s merely trapped in the iron logic a half-century old military-industrial complex.
But Mr. Obama suggested on Tuesday that the objective had broadened. “The goal is to make sure that the Libyan people can make a determination about how they want to proceed, and that they’ll be finally free of 40 years of tyranny and they can start creating the institutions required for self-determination.” That is quite parallel to the objective the United States set in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
We’re not talking double-dip recession yet, but the warning signs are too numerous to ignore. It’s difficult to see how the modest gains in the labor market we’ve seen over the last six months can continue if jobless claims remain elevated and GDP growth continues to slacken.
But ignoring the problem is exactly what both the White House and Congress appear to be doing. There are absolutely no plans afoot to address unemployment or slowing economic growth. The notion that sharp cuts in spending will spur growth is absurd — Europe’s austerity binge offers the most obvious counter-example.
via Never mind Medicare. What about the economy? – 2012 Elections – Salon.com.
Of the 65,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent fuel generated by U.S. reactors, about 75 percent is kept in cooling pools. According to Robert Alvarez, a senior policy advisor in the U.S. Department of Energy in the Clinton administration and co-author of the report, those pools were not designed for the amount of fuel — or the level of radiation — they are holding and are vulnerable to the type of events that crippled the Fukushima plant in Japan in April.
That is to say, the US nuclear establishment – industrialists, businessmen, politicians, and bureaucrats – poses a catastrophic risk to the nation.
via Yale Environment 360: U.S. Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools Pose Catastrophic Risks, Report Claims.
Sounds like weather particles have caucused and are in a conspiracy against us. Or maybe it’s just anthropogenic climate change. We’re conspiring against ourselves.
Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade — well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining? Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta? You might also have to ask yourself: Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?
via A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never! – The Washington Post.
Moving Planet is a worldwide rally to demand solutions to the climate crisis—a single day to move away from fossil fuels. For too long, our leaders have denied and delayed, compromised and caved. That era must come to an end.
Come on bike, on skates, on a board, or just on foot. Come with your neighbors and your friends, your family and your co-workers. Come be part of something huge. It’s time to get moving on the climate crisis.
More generally, how can the internet strengthen a small community, and how weaken it?
i think for the first time we can really imagine staying at home in a local economy and still being a part of the larger world. there’s no longer the need to choose between staying by your roots and ‘going out in the world to make something of yourself.
via The Daily Riptonite: Bill McKibben, Riptonite, on communities and climate change: part 3.
Truth and Traditions 