You Were Born Wealthy, But No One Told You!

by RobertConnors

NOTE: The following is purely opinion, and is offered only for a bit of wry perspective on our world.

Imagine that you were born fabulously wealthy. As an infant you had no idea that there was a great treasure at your disposal, and relied upon others to provide for your every need. As you grew, you began to hear mentions of the wonderful inheritance that was yours, a thing of fabulous value, and wondered about what it could be. You only knew that one day it would be yours.

continued at Daily Kos....

The new 'Anthropocene Epoch' Means the Doom of Most Species on Earth

by RobertConnors

The 10,000+ years of the Holocene Epoch have ended abruptly, and a new Epoch is coming to dominate the Earth: that of the Anthropocene.

continued at Daily Kos....

Death Wish 2010: Climate Change Deniers Seal the Greenhouse

by ignatzmouse

In the midst of what is becoming the hottest year on record, what remained of an already compromised address to climate change was stripped from the Obama administration's energy bill. The climate legislation could not pass intact because the administration was not willing to fight for it in the smirking face of climate change deniers, deregulators, and politicians in the pocket of polluters. The will to act for tomorrow, even as the warming daylight breaks our collective sleep, is more fragile than the sheen of atmosphere wisping over this small rock in space. Politicians it seems fear the deniers, fear that they may be accused of foresight in the face of the blind march of corporatism as if allegiance to its ideology trumps all else in its wake. So they make a devil's bargain while the planet cooks and pundits rook. If this administration is incapable of fueling change instead of carbon tycoons, can we ever again hope that climate change will be addressed before the inevitable?

continued at Daily Kos...

Maybe .. a way to capture carbon, after all

by shpilk

http://www.physorg.com/...

"In the Solar Thermal Electrochemical Photo (STEP) carbon capture process, the sun’s visible light and heat are used to capture large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it to solid carbon for storage or carbon monoxide for fuel generation. Image copyright: Stuart Licht, et al. ©2010 American Chemical Society."

Potentially this is good news, but don't get too excited. It's not just about carbon dioxide. And even if it works, there are aspects to consider.

continued at Daily Kos...

A simple thought for a clean carbon fee ...

by A Siegel

In pure economic efficiency terms, the most cost-effective system for establishing a price on carbon pollution and starting a societal move toward a lower-carbon future, might be an upstream simple price.

Carbon Fee not tax

This price is not a "tax", because a 'tax' implies a taking of a good. That assumes that we have a right to pollute and impact others. In fact, that very pollution is a taking of a good, a seizing of a value, that occurs today without any form of compensation.

If you dump an old mattress at the county dump, you pay a fee ... not a tax.  We need to charge a 'dumping fee', a polluter's fee for dumping CO2 into the air we breathe ...

continued at Daily Kos....