Is Climate Change Terrifying British Kids?

What commercials do you remember? One of them – which is kinda before my time – is the Apple “1984″ commercial. About 25 years ago, a commercial came out symbolizing Apple as a ‘change from the ordinary’. Today, it seems, commercials are pushing the envelope a bit more: in England, a climate change ad is on the chopping block due to content that is “scaring kids”.

According to Treehugger,

The premise is simple enough: it’s a British TV ad designed to get adults’ attention and to highlight the importance of acting to stop climate change. It shows a father reading a bedtime story about global warming to his daughter. The story comes to life, showing starving, crying cartoon bunny rabbits and drowning dogs–and the daughter is terrified.

Check it:

Is it too scary? Or just scary enough?

Posted by:

Steve Romain

Talkin’ Mississippi Equality Blues

I love my home state, Mississippi, warts and all. I feel lucky to come from a place where people still talk to strangers, where hipsters aren’t the only things tweeting, and that’s not even to mention the food, the music, the landscape.

But Mississippi has a less than stellar reputation, and we’ve spent the last one hundred and fifty years dealing with the social shock of war, reconstruction, distrust and violence. The future of Mississippi will take massive effort to make right, to keep all that is good and excise the demons of the past. But change is gonna come, and one Mississippian, Ceara Sturgis, is taking that change all the way to the bank.

Ceara is a 17 year old “straight-A student, goalie on the soccer team, a trumpet player in the band and active in Students Against Drunk Driving.” A model kid, until she chose to submit a Senior yearbook photo in which she’s wearing a tuxedo (check the left).

Ceara is gay, and she decided that after 12 years of education she would pose in the clothes she was comfortable in. But that decision caused her School Board to forbid the photo’s publication and has  ignited a discussion of Mississippi and sexual equality, the kind of discussion that is a long time coming.

… Continue Reading

Posted by:

Sam Patton

The Fight Against Love

If there’s something I personally hate, it’s when people abuse their power to accomplish their own personal vendettas. When TV hosts, politicians and famous people use their social standing to attack topics they have no right or basis to speak about. Especially when that topic is love.

This is why it makes my blood boil when discrimination about marriage or sexuality comes into play. When someone beats their definition of marriage as ‘it was in the bible’ into law, knowing this because they are religious and white, it undermines the progress towards unity that we’ve made over the past 50 years.

Frankly, some of these people know about as much about ‘traditional marriage’ as Falcon “Balloon Boy” Heene knows about flying – basically nothing.

Nevertheless, bigots pushing their own dated views are nothing new. Let’s take a look at a Justice of the Peace who denies marriage licenses for interracial couples and a bunch of politicians who are calling for a Department of Education appointee to be kicked out because he is.. wait for it.. gay. Stay tuned, after the jump.
… Continue Reading

Posted by:

Steve Romain

A Dollar for Your Water

As far back as I can remember, water was a right, and right there for the drinking. When I was a kid, I would turn the knob and cool, clear H2O would just come out, as much as I could want.

Water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface and is recognized as one of the absolutely essential elements in the development of life as we know it…meaning without water, we wouldn’t be here. Due to climate change, that staple of human life is becoming a bit harder to come by.

Check this factoid from the EPA:

All regions of the world show an overall net negative impact of climate change on water resources and freshwater ecosystems. Areas in which runoff is projected to decline are likely to face a reduction in the value of the services provided by water resources. The beneficial impacts of increased annual runoff in other areas are likely to be tempered in some areas by negative effects of increased precipitation variability and seasonal runoff shifts on water supply, water quality and flood risks (IPCC, 2007)

This means that due to climate change, water is becoming a precious commodity. While over 90 percent of the world delivers water as a public utility, water privatization is on the rise in poorer countries and now in stressed areas of the US, as the climate of our planet steadily changes.

By 2013, thirty six states will experience some sort of water shortage. And the enterprising businessmen of America would love to step in and charge us to supply fresh water, even though the industrial pollution of our waterways (often by the same businessmen who support privatization) is a primary factor in the climate change that is leading to these water shortages!

The effects of privatization on lower income communities are drastic. Water bills skyrocket and invariably, the city runs dry. Check this real life story, entitled “Water Warriors”:

You’d think that if you’re paying high prices for a substance as fundamental as water that it’d be pristine and non-toxic. According to a recent report by the New York Times, that isn’t always true. Forty percent of community water systems have violated the Safe Drinking Water Act on – at least – one occasion, which is a startling factor.

So, we could look at it this way: we could purchase overpriced, potentially polluted water from multinational corporations or we could urge the administration to rexamine and come down on climate change profiteers, who purchase and poison the water systems of our communities.

Some things are too priceless to sell, and it is an affront to all Americans that we would be required to pay a privately owned company for what is, in affect, the ability to stay alive, if the climate keeps changing. That isn’t consumer choice, that’s piracy, and the question is, what are we going to do about it?  Will we stand back and accept corporate control of our very ability to live and breathe?

It’s our call, and it’s about time we make it.

Posted as part of Blog Action Day | www.blogactionday.org

Posted by:

Steve Romain

Stephen Colbert Hits Glenn Beck Hard!

I don’t have a TV, so I tend to have to catch up with Colbert a few nights after his shows air, but this indictment of pundits is stunning! Don’t just take it as a sarcastic bash at Glenn Beck.. you can basically put any pundit’s name in there.

Whatcha think?

Posted by:

Steve Romain