Our Environment in a World of Trouble

Today, I listened in on a live web chat that was broadcast in the White House with the EPA’s (Environmental Protection Agency) Administrator Lisa Jackson, who discussed measures to reduce Toxic air pollutions from power plants. Administrator Jackson and The EPA are proposing standards to limit mercury, acid gas, and other toxic pollution from power plants, keeping 91 percent of the mercury in coal from being released into our air. Toxic air pollutants from coal and oil fired power plants cause serious health issues all around the world. If levels of toxins, mercury and harmful gas are reduced, it would prevent thousands of illnesses – it’s that simple. But currently there are no limits on the toxic air pollutions released from power plants and I think that this is a major issue that needs to be resolved before our whole country suffers from power plant pollution.

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Posted by:

Oscar

Peak Oil…hey, got a light?

This is a few days old i.e. another epoch in internetz time but I bet when society crashes and we burn our laptops for plastic scented warmth, we’ll kill for the chance to one more snarky blog post, to tag one more pic of the person we were before Nature takes our headphones off and smacks us back to the Ice Age.

By which I mean, is anyone really surprised that not only do we have to confront the awesome, shame-on-us specter of global destruction as a simple truth – we are consuming the world, will we do anything about it? – but also as a classic opportunity for government conspiracy, what we don’t know will kill us, of course the Man is savvy to the fact that famine and hedonism are mutually exclusive and you’ll catch more of us flies if you act like the honey is gonna flowwwww forever.

Turns out “[t]he world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit,” with the United States quite specifically called out for encouraging a false representation of 1.) how much oil is undiscovered [how do they know?!] and 2.) how much we’ve got left in our fields.

Consensus is growing that this roller coaster we call Life™ is already over the hump, we’re hurtling down hill to a NEW epoch the people at the Center for Egregiously Named Memetics call Peak Oil. When you hit Peak Oil, your oil production enters a phase called “terminal decline….” yeah, it looks kinda like this:

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Posted by:

Sam Patton

GTFO: The Recession Is Good For The Climate?

Here’s your GTFO MOMENT of the day:

According to a recent report published by New Scientist, the economic downturn may be doing good work for the climate. Before you call bullshiz on it, check out some of the connections the report, released by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, has found:

• CO2 emissions have grown at a slower rate this year than in recent years as “fossil fuel consumption decreased globally for the first time since 1992″
• Biofuels counted for 2.5 percent of global fuel consumption this year, as developing nations start to embrace them.

Definitely provides some food for thought.

Posted by:

Steve Romain