Texas: God is that YOU? God: Nall. That’s All Yall…

Wildfires Burn in More Than 200 Texas Counties

It is barely spring and the state of Texas has already seen an estimated 1.4 million acres light up. Wildfires are sweeping across the state and have led to burn bans in 202 of our state’s 254 counties — including my home county, Harris County (SAVE US LAWD).

This isn’t the only bad thing going on in Texas. Our legislators are proposing very toxic laws that deplete the public education system, kick seniors out of nursing homes, take babies off health insurance and inhumanely target our Latino neighbors.
Why do bad things happen to good Texans?

Posted by:

Christina Sanders

Thom Yorke joins 350: eARTh to prove he’s not a Polystyrene Man

Radiohead has never been a typical band, and lead singer Thom Yorke doesn’t just sneer at the status quo to sell albums. Any fan of his music is well versed in his paranoid android musings about the end of the world and the total depravity of mankind – see Pyramid Song, Fake Plastic Trees…pretty much everything he’s said since hitting puberty.

But beyond his searing lyrics, Yorke has been organizing like a born rabble-rouser for years, lending his artistic credibility to environmental and human rights issues across the globe. This week, he’s teamed up with 350.org’s project 350 eARTh: Planetary Art Show for the Climate to raise awareness about what is arguably (seriously?!?! Argue with an ICEBERG, climate deniers…if you can find one) the biggest problem facing mankind lately: world destruction and the end of life as we know it. Yep! That big.

Hit the jump to see Thom’s shocking admission that, in fact, 2 + 2 does NOT equal 5. Or something.

Posted by:

Sam Patton

Heat waves and extremely high temperatures could be commonplace in the U.S. by 2039

I guess i’m too focused on the local warming to be able to understand the global warming. But check out what Stanford Researchers discover!!

Mark Schwartz has the story via @DaChesterFrench’s Twitter Acct.

Exceptionally long heat waves and other hot events could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study by Stanford University climate scientists.

“Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Diffenbaugh concluded that hot temperature extremes could become frequent events in the U.S. by 2039, posing serious risks to agriculture and human health.

“In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heat waves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities,” said Diffenbaugh, a center fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “Those kinds of severe heat events also put enormous stress on major crops like corn, soybean, cotton and wine grapes, causing a significant reduction in yields.”

The GRL study took two years to complete and is co-authored by Moetasim Ashfaq, a former Stanford postdoctoral fellow now at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The study comes on the heels of a recent NASA report that concluded that the previous decade, January 2000 to December 2009, was the warmest on record.

Read more after the jump!

… Continue Reading

Posted by:

DJWillieShakes

Cold in Copenhagen!!! Report from #COP15.

League of Young Voters Education Fund members, Jayme Montgomery,
Christina Polcari and Courtney Hull on the streets of Copenhagen
discussing the protest they will attend on the morning of December 16,
2009 – follow their trip at http://youngvoter.org/cop15

“There is a big protest in COP tomorrow morning – delegates will walk
out of convention to join thousands in the streets (esp 20,000
people). People are really pissed here because it doesn’t look like
we will have a bold agreement that all countries agree on by the end
of the week. We will be at the protest tomorrow to report!” – Heather
Box

Check the video after the jump!

… Continue Reading

Posted by:

Biko Baker

Hit Down Hard in Copenhagen

Heather and Jayme interviewed by Current TV

The League of Young Voters Education Fund is on the scene in Denmark! It was inspiring to fly all the way across the world last night only to disembark from the plane and see dozens of familiar faces walking through the streets of beautiful Copenhagen. Some good friends, some co-workers, some acquaintances; all allies, but the quality they had in common was a visible, tangible feeling of exhaustion. As I jumped up and down in the streets of Denmark, taking in the experience and excited to connect with the people I knew to find out where I should be in the AM to get the best story I was stopped in my tracks by their warnings:

“Heather, lower your expectations. It seems like the decision to make no decision is already set.”

It’s stunning, honestly. So I am in search of the silver lining – the good news from Copenhagen – which I know is here, I just haven’t found it yet. A group of international youth sitting next to me right now are discussing the need for the United States Senate to mandate action in order to make the US move in Copenhagen. They are talking tactics for pressuring Congress. Many people are considering an international push on the US Senate; district by district pressure in the States, massive global direct action … I wish I could jump in the conversation with the answer but there are still so many questions.

What I can say with confidence is that we need to fight the exhaustion and keep pushing our elected officials. We don’t have time for exhaustion, only for action. We need to join the small nations, the independent voices, who are crying out for true change, for diplomacy and equal treatment.

Off to join the conversation – will send updates soon. Less than 24 hours on the ground and it’s a different world…

What’s the view from America?

Posted by:

Heather Box