Environment
BITTER DISPUTE OVER PG&E'S BANKRUPTCY STILL RAGES WHILE DIABLO REMAINS UN-INSPECTED....
TIME TO ACT!!
Time (again!) to call the governor, the legislature, the CPUC, the courts, the utility, potential investors, stakeholders, etc....
btw....if you think CA's nuke war is brutal, check out Ohio: (https://tinyurl.com/OHSierra1e )
Powerful forces are quickly moving Pacific Gas & Electric towards a settlement on its hideously complex multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy case. Thankfully, Gov. Gavin Newsom has put at least a temporary hold on a final agreement.
Here’s the good news: The debate is over. 75% of US citizens believe climate change is human-caused; more than half say we have to do something and fast.
Mark Ruffalo as Rob Billot in Dark Waters.
Dark Waters is the most important American film in a decade, although it squanders an opportunity to fully portray PFAS* contamination as the nationwide human health epidemic it has become. The film leaves out half of the story and that involves the military’s role.
*per- and poly fluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) include PFOA, PFOS and 5,000 other harmful chemicals used in a variety of military and industrial applications.
Most viewers will walk away thinking they watched a movie that documents the true story of a relatively isolated case of DuPont contaminating the local soil and water of an unfortunate town, Parkersburg, West Virginia. Regardless, Dark Waters is a superior film. If you haven’t seen it, please do so.
Roger Hallam is of course right in his short book, Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse. While some portion of humanity heaps scorn on the victims of the fossil fuel propaganda who deny climate science, only a much smaller portion points out the equally delusional and disastrous denial of the need for nonviolent revolution.
Facts are facts, as Hallam points out. The current political systems cannot change fast enough. They have to be overturned. This is no more open to dispute than the fact that humanity is roasting the globe. But it is perhaps even less acceptable to those who believe that they can believe what they choose to believe.
“NGOs, political parties and movements which have brought us through the last 30 years of abject failure,” writes Hallam, “– a 60% rise in global CO2 emissions since 1990 — are now the biggest block to transformation.” Hallam is a founder of Extinction Rebellion and points to the obvious need for mass civil disobedience.
Throughout its history, Earth has experienced five mass extinction events. See, for example, ‘Timeline Of Mass Extinction Events On Earth’. It is now experiencing the sixth.
1. The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction, which occurred about 439 million years ago, wiped out 86% of life on Earth at the time. Most scientists believe that this mass extinction was precipitated by glaciation and falling sea levels (possibly a result of the Appalachian mountain range forming), catastrophically impacting animal life which lived largely in the ocean at the time.
The nuclear industry's violent assault on democracy in Ohio has taken a surreal leap. It could seriously impact whether Donald Trump will carry this swing state—-and the nation—-in 2020.
Ohio's GOP secretary of state has now asked the Ohio Supreme Court NOT to provide a federal judge with answers about key procedural questions surrounding the state's referendum process.
The short-term issue is about a billion-dollar bailout for two nuke reactors and two coal burners.
Long-term it asks whether targeted violence perpetrated by paid thugs will now define our election process. And whether the public referendum will remain a workable part of our democracy.
The battle starts with House Bill 6, the now-infamous billion-dollar nuke bailout approved by the corrupt, gerrymandered Ohio legislature in late July.
HB6 forces all Ohio ratepayers to subsidize two crumbling nukes on Lake Erie, along with two decrepit coal burners, one of them in Indiana. It helps underwrite ten small solar farms, but undercuts much larger subsidies for other wind and solar facilities.
y withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, the US is effectively saying the global climate crisis is not our problem. This is American exceptionalism run amok. The US acts as if it can opt-out of the only planet we have because, well, because we’re special. This is not logical, this is not practical, this is not moral, and this is not possible. This is delusional. This is a crime against humanity. And yet the House Democrats remain obsessed with the low-level intrigues of Ukraine, Trumps, Bidens, and other clowns while turning away from the growing global catastrophe. Yes, there’s some evidence of minor-league failed chicanery on several sides of the Ukraine mashup. But the case is a joke compared to the climate crisis, and our Democratic leadership chooses to focus on the picayune over the universally tragic.
y withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, the US is effectively saying the global climate crisis is not our problem. This is American exceptionalism run amok. The US acts as if it can opt-out of the only planet we have because, well, because we’re special. This is not logical, this is not practical, this is not moral, and this is not possible. This is delusional. This is a crime against humanity. And yet the House Democrats remain obsessed with the low-level intrigues of Ukraine, Trumps, Bidens, and other clowns while turning away from the growing global catastrophe. Yes, there’s some evidence of minor-league failed chicanery on several sides of the Ukraine mashup. But the case is a joke compared to the climate crisis, and our Democratic leadership chooses to focus on the picayune over the universally tragic.
At last night's Free Press Second Saturday Salon; lifelong activist Harvey Wasserman presented an alarming trend of bribery attempts, harassment, and even physical assaults on Ohio Senate Bill HB-6 ("Nuke Bailout") referendum Petition Gatherers in Ohio. Joe DeMare and Rebecca Calhoun shared their first-hand experiences being confronted by paid "blockers" while attempting to exercise their civic right of informing the public of a referendum and gathering petition signatures.
In a landmark letter organized by San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, twenty-two California mayors and several other public officials this week asked that Pacific Gas & Electric become a community-owned entity.
PG&E was once America’s largest privately owned utility. But it is now on federal probation stemming from felony crime convictions due to a 2010 gas explosion that incinerated much of San Bruno, killing eight people. The disaster was caused by the company’s failure to properly maintain its pipelines.