Blog Action Day: Eat Fish- Vote Democrat!!

So today is a Blog Action Day for the Environment, and moonbat feels moved to talk about her own humble beginnings as an environmentalist. For many years as a child, I had always believed that the lake behind my house was a natural phenomenon, designed there to house fish and frogs. At some point I had to expand my mind to the idea that bulldozers and men had created a five acre pit, where legend had it that a pick-up truck got stuck in, and was abandoned to the waters. Leeches lived there, and a childhood project to transfer cattails to increase frog habitats still shores up one of the banks. Then one year I brainstormed the idea to do a science fair project on how the fish in the lake got along, using the same pet-store equipment my sister used to test her gold fish tank. Although she used tablets to adjust the water in the tank, surely the lake with it's grasses and algae could regulate and control it's own waters. I proved that in fact the lake had no natural ecosystem, ammounting to nothing more self-regulating than a puddle of muddy water. I won the Divisional Award.

Years I spent in subsequent projects trying to figure out why man-made lakes devolved into cesspools of poison while natural lakes sustain life. Over that time, the beautiful sunspots and small-mouth bass dissapeared from it's waters, and the populations of lawns around the lake exploded. Having no way to cheaply measure other forms of pollution in the run off, and being unable to use an increase in water flora to prove the lake could be given an ecosystem, I gave up in despair. The lake continues to grow brown, and I turned away from the life of a professional scientist towards an interest in labor ecomonics and politics. Still, I love to sit with a glass of wine and listen to the frogs on a summer's evening. Someday soon, they too will be gone. Year after year, the summer drough season grows. Twenty years ago it was the month of August. This year it lasted four months and the ethanol-destined corn crops failed. You could walk across the lake and not get the top of your head wet.

Today I live outside of the District of Columbia, and one of my favorite pastimes is to run along the public park trails of the local watershed. The boulders and shale ledges are stunning, the chipmunks defiant, the occasional red fox a delightful blur. But every so often I pass the signs that state the danger of stepping a foot into the waters or eating the fish. Next to them, children play and dogs drink, and parents teach children how to hook a worm. We say that we live in a society where people are free to choose their own reckless demises, but we fail as a people to ensure that each generation has the ability to judge correctly the dangers they face. I spent time last year campaigning against a toll highway, promoted by developers, which will bulldoze low-income communities to allow for greater traffic access to the metropolitan area. Sierra Club counter argued that the money spend on the road would be better spent on expanding the public Metro system in ways that linked the suburb work centers of the capital city, reducing both traffic congestion and air pollution. The air polliution of our cities gives you the same risk of chronic heart disease as living with a smoker. Still, people generally greated us with the expectation that the developers were going to make their lives easier, and that we were the unintelligent fruitcakes. Even though we would have saved them money.



The damages caused by permission to pollute that is pervasive in the Republican Party line are slowly coming to light. Chevron's refinery in Richmond, California, dumped more mercury and other pollutants into San Pablo Bay than allowed under its permits during half of the reporting periods in 2005. 57 percent of the 3,600 major facilities nationwide that must report to EPA exceeded their Clean Water Act permits at least once in 2005. The average violation was almost four times the legal limit of what can be dumped into waterways. 628 facilities violated their Clean Water Act permits for at least half of the monthly reporting periods, and 85 sites exceeded their permits during every reporting period. The pollutants include mercury, copper, selenium, coliform, chromium, zinc, nickle, nitrogen, and ammonia. All of this goes into our streams and rivers and oceans, into our food, and into us. Yet we have built the whole notion of our ecomony around the idea that if the litter is too small to see, we shouldn't hold the trashy person that spills it accountable. We stage a manhunt for someone with TB, but we don't hunt down executives who kill people by what they exhale into the air for profit.

John Edwards Endorsed as "Green " & "Pro-Union"

So today John Edwards received an endorsement for President in 2008 by the environmental group Friends of the Earth Action. The group cited Edwards' pledges to institute carbon caps as early as 2010 with a cap-and-trade system, to work for a new climate treaty that includes developing countries, and his opposition to federal subsidies for new nuclear power plants. "For these reasons, we trust John Edwards to work for a healthy environment and fight for the rights of regular people in our country and around the world," commented Brent Blackwelder, the group's president. "After 7 years of the most destructive environmental president in modern history, we feel strongly that John Edwards is the candidate most likely to stand up to the powerful, corporate polluters and their lobbyists." Edwards' plan will reduce carbon emissions by 15% in 2020 and 80% by 2050, increase energy efficiency, and fund green energy technology through a greenhouse emissions permit system designed to raise $10 billion in funds. Edwards' plan also repeals all subsidies for Big Oil. That move, and charging industrial polluters for their "air litter" in order to fund a cleaner world for all of us, are what really draw me to the plan. Polluters should pay. Simple!

Let's take a moment along with Edwards and pass a cold beer to Al Gore:

"Congratulations to Al Gore. The Nobel Peace Prize rewards three decades of Vice President Gore's prescient and compelling -- and often lonely -- advocacy for the future of the Earth. His leadership stands in stunning contrast to the failure of the current administration to pursue policies that would reduce the harm of global warming.

"The Nobel Committee's recognition of Vice President Gore shines a bright light on the most inconvenient truth of all -- the selection of George Bush as president has endangered the peace and prosperity of the entire planet.

"Two terms later, Americans are ready for bold change, ready to be patriotic about something other than war and ready to take action to stop global warming before it's too late. The stakes are sky-high -- as Al Gore predicted, our Earth is in the balance."

Big support also for Edwards' Green Collar Jobs Initiative. His point is this, "We can turn the crisis of climate change into an opportunity for a new energy economy, right here in America. Now is the time to make sure that the economy of tomorrow is an all-aboard economy where nobody is left behind." The initiative would create 150,000 new jobs a year, with 50,000 of them specifically skilled labor jobs for the working poor. "His national 25 percent renewable electricity standard can reenergize America's manufacturing sector with increased demand for wind turbines, solar panels and biomass engines. His emphasis on distributed generation will drive consumers and businesses to new businesses that can market, install, and service on-site power production. To freeze our demand for electricity, workers will be needed to design, construct, weatherize and retrofit energy-efficient buildings and homes. Many of these jobs must be done locally." Why should this make the working poor vote for Edwards? Maybe because 640,000 workers were mass laid-off in the first few months of 2007, and one in every four American workers holds a low-wage job with few benefits and little hope for advancement. That's not liberal propaganda, that's Bush's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Green Collar Jobs won't be a federal show either, for all of you who are now mouthing "big government." Block grants will unite small business, unions, community colleges, and high schools to create training programs that will give Americans the skills and knowledge needed to make this a success for America. Green Collar Jobs won't just create Wal-Mart disposable labor, but skilled workers with credentials through high schools and colleges. "Employers who hire Stepping Stone graduates and offer living wages and benefits will be eligible for existing Work Opportunity Tax Credits and given preference in public contracts." In part because of this, Edwards will also get the nod from SEIU-Iowa this afternoon, which is great news. SEIU's local endorsement will bar union supporters of Obama or Clinton from Chicago or New York from streaming into Iowa to campaign against Edwards, as stipulated under union rules. SEIU-California also endorses Edwards, and they will be able to volunteer in his campaign in Iowa. Sigh. Moonbat can only dream...

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John Edwards, politics, current affairs, economics, poverty, health insurance, homeland security, war on terror, Iraq, moonbat

Bush Makes America Filthy On Your Dime

So today we learn that under Shrub, the EPA is pursuing fewer criminal prosecutions against polluters. Surprised?

"The slower pace of enforcement mirrors a decline in resources for pursuing environmental wrongdoing. The EPA now employs 172 investigators in its Criminal Investigation Division, below the minimum of 200 agents required by the 1990 Pollution Prosecution Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush.

The actual number of investigators available at any time is even smaller, agents said, because they sometimes are diverted to other duties, such as service on EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson's eight-person security detail.


Johnson, President Bush's chief environmental regulator, foreshadowed a less confrontational approach toward enforcement when he served as the EPA's top deputy in late 2004. "The days of the guns and badges are over," Johnson told a group of farm producers in Georgia the day before Bush won reelection, according to a news account of the speech.

Prosecutors and agency employees blame the diversion of funds to the war on terror, but 9-11 or not, the funding was promised to banish before that Tuesday. And the result of not being convicted guilty of poisoning Americans?

The Justice Department in August also touted a plea bargain with IMC Shipping Co. that required the Singapore ship operator to pay $10 million in connection with a massive oil spill in 2004 that killed thousands of birds in Alaska's Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.



Prosecutors told the court they had enough evidence to indict the company for criminal negligence under the Clean Water Act and for making false statements early in the investigation. But the deal they reached called for guilty pleas to two counts of violating the Refuse Act and one violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Prosecutors cited the company's cooperation for the leniency.

The decision to drop the negligence charges could be valuable to the company, which as a result remains eligible to seek reimbursement from a special government fund for $77 million of the more than $100 million it has spent cleaning up the spill.




The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund -- administered by the U.S. Coast Guard and funded by a special oil tax -- can reimburse shippers for all cleanup costs not covered by insurance, but only if the incident does not involve gross negligence or willful misconduct.

Let's see what it costs to spill oil if you cut a plea bargin under Bush. Instead of paying the $100 million in clean up fees and the $10 million in fines, you pay $23 million in clean up costs and $10 million in fines. Which means that Bush just used your tax money to say a loyal oil company $77 million dollars. How sweet, he bought you an oil spill!!. Just another example of Republicans being responsible with money? As Barbie says, "math is hard!"

My wallet just said ouch!!

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EPA, oil industry, global warming, pollution, green, environment, save the earth, george w. bush