President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for his accomplishments in international diplomacy, climate change and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation. The Nobel Committee praised Obama for his "constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting," but, Richard Kim of The Nation wonders if the award comes too soon, as Obama has not yet committed to attending the international climate summit at Copenhagen.
Hopes of passing climate change legislation before the climate summit in Copenhagen are quickly dissipating, as Rachel Morris reports in Mother Jones. It seems unlikely that any major action will be taken before the December meeting. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) originally expected all six Senate committees to allocate cap-and-trade pollution permits by September 10, and later extended the deadline to September 28. But on Wednesday, Reid signaled that the legislation might be delayed until next year. Why is climate change taking the backseat? Simply, passing a health care bill and wrestling the economy back into shape have sapped lawmakers' energy for climate change.
International climate negotiations are currently bogged down in smog. Many countries are in disagreement about the best way to go about reducing emissions and curbing climate change. Some, like the U.S. and Great Britain, are working together to cut carbon emissions; while others say it's their way or the highway. Until the air clears, it will be difficult to determine which global leaders are making the most effective choices-or even what the best path to a cleaner earth will be.
Last week, Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil and the American Automobile Association (AAA) announced new programs that promote sustainability and a cleaner planet. The three corporations may have turned over a new leaf, but their efforts may actually be a case of corporate greenwashing. In today's economic climate, many companies are taking advantage of consumers that don't have the funds to be choosy about the environmental-friendliness of their purchases.
I am happy to announce that beginning today I will be working as a Fellow and blogger with Campaign for America's Future. This post introduces the areas I will be pursuing.
The economy is terrible. There aren't enough jobs. Most of the jobs that are still there are not paying enough for people to keep up, and people are afraid they could lose them tomorrow. So we all have too much debt. We have too little health care. We have too much stress. And in the bigger picture we have too little power to do anything about it.
They say we're reaching a "bottom" and that there are "green shoots." But I am afraid that this isn't your father's recession. I'm afraid this economy isn't a pendulum that has swing too far in one direction, ready to be pulled by natural forces back to the other side. I am afraid that this isn't a "business cycle" pattern with a fall, then a bottom, then a recovery where all the shoppers return to the stores, all the jobs come back and growth picks up where it left off. Even "green shoot" optimists admit there will be few new jobs if there is any recovery.
It may be that we are not in a period of waiting for things to "get back to normal." Many people think that this economic collapse IS the return to normal.
My style is more Birkenstock than Birkin bag, so Fashion Week doesn't do much for me. You knowthe Shopocalypse has arrived when designers go dumpster diving for shoulder pads in the Dynasty/Dallas dustbin. Padded assets in this Grapes of Graft depression? Dust Bowl duds, à la the Waltons, would be more fitting for the hard times ahead.
But the John Patrick Organic fashion show managed to bypass both eighties excess and seventies scarcity and find fertile ground in "Green Acres," the sixties spoof starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as neophyte homesteaders. I knew this wouldn't be a run-of-the-mill runway show because (a) it featured a "young farmer bake sale," and (b) the invite came from Greenhorns director Severine Von Tscharner Fleming.
President Obama's got an awful lot on his plate. Sadly, it's all lousy leftovers from the previous administration: rotten bailouts, curdled wars, moldy policies. Is there any room for grass-fed, grassroots-led reform?
The eat-better-brigade's hoping our new Commander in Chief will be "the prize delivery guy...delivering fresh, steaming change in 30 minutes or less" as Raj Patel put it in a speech last Friday at the Farming For The Future conference in Pennsylvania. Patel bemoaned the monocrop monarchy that rules from our school cafeterias to our diners and dining rooms. He ended with the rousing declaration that we are "not consumers of democracy, we are its proprietors."
Who's minding the store, though? Will Obama even attempt to emancipate eaters from the military industrial complex cabal that helped Big Ag give small farms the boot? Our government's policies have played a scandalously large role in exiling wholesome, unprocessed, uncontaminated foods to the fringes of our culture.
Even our most progressive presidents can be addled by Agribiz propaganda. President-elect Obama--thanks to his corn-fed constituents, we presume--is regrettably fond of ethanol, unlike his rival, John McCain. And McCain's not the only Republican who slams the grain-for-gas scam. Arch conservative P.J. O'Rourke airs his aggravation with industrial ag in the current Weekly Standard:
The New York Times giveth, and the New York Times taketh away. On the one hand, Nick Kristof's eloquent plea to treat our farm animals more humanely moved me to tears. On the other hand, I've barely got enough digits to count the noxious "let's not save the planet" columns that John Tierney, Stanley Fish, and Stephen J. Dubner have tossed off in recent weeks like rancid croutons.
This may all be a joke to Tierney, but the truth is some of these issues are areas of real concern and because of this piece, his misinformation will be quoted back to us in comments every time we write about any of these subjects for the next two years, as the word from The authoritative New York Times.
Then Stanley Fish had to weigh in with a weary, Larry David-style kvetch in which his eco-freak wife sabotages his quality of life with recycled toilet paper, fluorescent bulbs, and grass-fed beef, of which he says:
But what's really disturbing about this move is that it suggests the Sierra Club and the PCL have lost their focus - instead of looking at the big picture of high speed rail and emphasizing the game-changing environmental benefits it brings, they're focusing on a small non-issue instead. They've lost sight of the forest for the trees and instead of providing leadership on this issue they may instead cast their lot with the far right and leave Californians with no viable alternative to soaring fuel prices and a transportation system that is making our environmental problems far worse.
First, their criticisms as reported by E.J. Schulz:
But the environmentalists are still seething over the selection of relatively undeveloped Pacheco Pass as the route to connect the Central Valley to the Bay Area. They favor the more urban Altamont Pass to the north because they say it would induce less sprawl....
Environmentalists would rather see trains run farther north in the Valley before heading west so that more populated cities are served. They like the Altamont route because it would bring trains closer to Modesto, Dublin, Pleasanton and Livermore in the first phase.
By contrast, the Pacheco route -- roughly following Highway 152 -- is in a less populated area. Environmentalists worry that a planned station in Gilroy would induce sprawl in surrounding rural areas.
These worries are baseless. Gilroy and much of southern Santa Clara County have strict urban growth boundaries. If those places were going to sprawl they would have already done so given their proximity to the job center and hot housing market of Silicon Valley. HSR doesn't change that dynamic.
