Walk, don't run (your engine) {ECSTASY}

by LaughingPlanet

I am a bona fide DFH.

I am coming clean, just don't ask me to take more than the minimum number of showers required to be tolerated in our modern world.

With that said, now more than ever, the DFH ethos is proving to have been right all along. Organic foods, once a fringe boutique food item, can be found at Walmart. Going green, once popular only amongst frogs, is now cooler than ever amongst image-conscious people and corporations alike. Climate change, once just a theory known as the greenhouse effect, is now a scientific fact backed by 98% of the world's scientists, and 100% of the population of non-stupid people worldwide.

The final hurdle of our eleventy-bazillion mile barefoot hippie high hurdle marathon in the little fact that even the most granola-filled and hippified amongst us still burn oil. Lots of oil.

The good news is that the solution is simple and has served mankind just fine for millennia: WALKING

x-posted @ TLP

continued at Daily Kos....

BP Nixes Congress Talking to Key Employees (and other BP News)

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse

Stupak: BP Won't Let Congress Talk To Key Employees, but not ready to issue subpoenas now.

The chairman of a House panel investigating the Gulf oil spill said Friday that BP won't let members talk to several employees who may have critical information about what led to the catastrophe.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., told The Associated Press that BP PLC has cited its own investigation as its reason for denying access to the employees.

This is not the first time BP has tried to control governmental probes of BP. The excuse of BP's own internal investigation was used to wiggle its way onto a governmental probe team where it succeeded in flipping employees to recant prior statements unfavorable to BP. Congress does not need to give BP an inch:  BP’s approval ratings of 6% is approaching Saddam Hussein’s 3%, a person that "our nation has gone to war against."

continued at Daily Kos....

Unexpected Environmental Alliances Amidst The Oil Spill: 'Jesus Will Rip Your Head Off'

by PaulLoeb

In the wake of the BP disaster, we've heard powerful stories from fishermen whose livelihoods may have been destroyed for decades or longer. However long it takes for the Gulf's fish, oyster and shrimp harvests to recover, those who've made their livelihoods harvesting them will need to create a powerful common voice if they're not going to continue to be made expendable. A powerful model comes from Seattle and Alaska salmon fisherman Pete Knutson, who has spent thirty-five years engaging his community to take environmental responsibility, creating unexpected alliances to broaden the impact of their voice, and in the process defeating massive corporate interests.

"You'd have a hard time spawning, too, if you had a bulldozer in your bedroom," Pete reminds us, explaining the destruction of once-rich salmon spawning grounds by commercial development and timber industry clearcutting. Pete could have simply accepted this degradation as inevitable, focusing on getting a maximum share of dwindling fish populations. Instead, he's gradually built an alliance between fishermen, environmentalists, and Native American tribes, persuading them to work collectively to demand that habitat be preserved and restored and to use the example of the salmon runs to highlight larger issues like global climate change.

continued at Daily Kos....

New Gulf video; Oiled & dying dolphins and whales

by worldforallpeopleorg

Whenever we get a shift to sustainability - years from now or decades, it will be because enough people have realized deeply enough that we absolutely have to find a way. Spreading that realization is slow going. Jarring videos like this new one may be our best hope.

continued at Daily Kos....

What is Behind the War - Our Real Issue and What I Can Do

by Ellinorianne

We can argue all we want about why we fight but ultimately the issue comes down to resources and what is at stake it is the survival of us as a species and our place in the world.

Our hubris as a species has not only put us in peril but has systematically wiped out species after species due to habitat loss from our encroachment on their space because we just need more.  

Deforestation, desertification and urban sprawl is snatching up vital space and pushing out species at an alarming rate.

continued at Daily Kos....

National Works Alternative Energy Program

by shpilk

In rough order of priority, here's what I'd be proposing in Congress.

Start with a national program.

Fund it by Federal surcharges on stock transactions, interest and dividend payments, profits from sales of property, taxation on Estates, and progressively apply these taxes. Here's a rough guide .. additional taxation for families making more than $100K/year add 1%, $250K/year 2%, $500K/year 3%, $1M/year 5%, $10M/year 10%, over $100M/year 25%. The rich will still be rich. They'll just be paying part of their fair share. Is that 'socialism'?

First, take these funds, and use them to hire Americans, using American made materials to upgrade, retrofit and reconfigure existing residential, government and business spaces to be more efficient. This will require labor, materials, technical management and engineering assets, it would employ unskilled as well as skilled labor. Our level of energy waste is horrendous and must be curtailed.

next ..

continued at Daily Kos....

James Hansen Awarded, but NOT yet Acknowledged

by jamess


Climate Scientists Awarded Prestigious Blue Planet Prize
Environmental News Service -- June 20, 2010

TOKYO, Japan, (ENS) - Two prominent climate scientists - one from Great Britain and one from the United States - have been are the winners of the 2010 Blue Planet Prize, an international environmental award which is considered to be Japan's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
[...]
Professor [Dr. Robert] Watson was chosen because of his significant part in providing scientific evidence for the depletion of the ozone layer in the 1980s, leading to the Montreal Protocol which banned ozone-depleting substances such as CFCs, and for his more recent role in bringing together science and policy to protect the global climate, as a former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Professor Watson said, " [...] It is a particular honor to receive it in the same year as James Hansen who has played a critical role in the climate change debate."

continued at Daily Kos....

A Sense of Place and a Changing World

by matching mole

'I have to be where I can see the sea'

Just now I was introduced to a relatively new word while listening to 'To The Best of Our Knowledge' on NPR.  The word is solastalgia, coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht.  The word is a 'riff' (using Albrecht's phrase from the NPR interview) on Nostalgia.  Nostalgia, a word coined in the 17th century, refers to a melancholy desire to return to a home you have left (the meaning has been broadened since then).  Solastalgia refers to melancholy due to changes to your home (i.e. your home has left you).

continued at Daily Kos....

News from the Arctic: 27 June 2010

by billlaurelMD

This is the next in an occasional series of diaries on the state of Northern Hemisphere Arctic sea ice (and other topics as warranted), written in memory of Johnny Rook, who passed away in early 2009. He was the author of the Climaticide Chronicles.

In my diary last week, I neglected to put the header acknowledging Johnny Rook's contributions to the environmental diaries here at Daily Kos.  I apologize for the oversight.

Okay, now on to this week's news.  The international study of the Arctic still goes on, despite our economic troubles.  At the North Pole in April 2010, two buoys with weather instruments were launched.  They're currently drifting south toward an area between Greenland and Svalbard called the Fram Strait; the green and red lines in the map below show their path through 11 June. At 26 June their locations were about a third of a degree or so further south than shown in the map.

More below.

continued at Daily Kos....

Dawn Chorus: Vermont's "Northeast Kingdom"

by juliewolf

Crossposted to Vermont's Green Mountain Daily

Birding and camping in Northern Vermont this month took us through Island Pond, Victory Basin and a part of the Sylvio Conte refuge network.  We had good sightings of birds, butterflies and even one fairly cool sighting of a young bull moose.

continued at Daily Kos....

BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 33

by Gulf watchers

The current ROV DIARY: Gulf Watchers ROV - # 146.

Rules of the Road

• We take volunteers for subsequent diaries in the sub diaries or ROV's as we have playfully coined them.
• Please rec this mothership diary, not the ROVs.
• Please be kind to fellow kossacks who may have limited bandwidth and refrain from posting images or videos.

PLEASE visit Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier's diaries to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!

To repeat: please refrain from commenting in this mothership diary, unless you're volunteering for a submersible shift.

continued at Daily Kos....

Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Solstice and Lunar Eclipse edition)

by Neon Vincent

Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.

This week's featured story comes from CBS News.

Partial Lunar Eclipse Comes and Goes
by Charles Cooper

A partial eclipse took place early Saturday when the earth passed between the sun and the moon.

The event , which was visible to many in western stretches of North America and parts of  the Asia-Pacific region, began at 3:17 a.m. PDT (1017 GMT) and ended about three hours later.

There will be a total solar eclipse on July 11.

More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.

continued at Daily Kos....