Study confirms Tea Party was created by Big Tobacco and billionaire Koch brothers, ‘to advocate on behalf of the tobacco industry’s anti-tax, anti-regulation agenda’

By Brendan DeMelle11 February 2013 (DeSmogBlog) – A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene. Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf […]

South Americans face deadly water battles – ‘The only thing the people want is water for families, but the mining companies want to take it. And soldiers will kill if you get in the way.’

By Michael Smith12 February 2013 (Bloomberg Markets Magazine) – People streamed into the central square in Celendin, a small city in the Peruvian Andes, the morning of July 3, 2012. They were protesting the government’s support for Newmont Mining Corp.’s plan to take control of four lakes to make way for a new gold and […]

China’s thick smog arrives in Japan – ‘This is dangerous pollution, like poison, and we can’t protect ourselves’

TOKYO, 4 Feb 2013 (AFP) – The suffocating smog that blanketed swathes of China is now hitting parts of Japan, sparking warnings Monday of health risks for the young and the sick. The environment ministry’s website has been overloaded as worried users log on to try to find out what is coming their way. “Access […]

President Obama cites storms, drought to build case for climate action – ‘If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will’

By Coral Davenport13 February 2013 Fifteen years ago, when President Clinton raised the specter of climate change in his State of the Union address, he spoke of a “gathering crisis” that would need to be stopped “at some point in the next century.” Now scientists say that crisis is starting to arrive – and President […]

Sunlight stimulates release of carbon dioxide in melting permafrost – ‘Permafrost carbon is potentially a huge factor that will help determine how fast the Earth warms’

By Monte Morin12 February 2013 (Los Angeles Times) – Ancient plant and animal matter trapped within Arctic permafrost can be converted rapidly into climate-warming carbon dioxide when melted and exposed to sunlight, according to a new study. In a report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of environmental […]

Vanishing homeland of Kiribati leaves people with nowhere to go – ‘Climate change is the greatest moral challenge of the 21st century’

By Linda Uan12 February 2013 (WA Today) – On an average day in Kiribati we can look out across our calm and peaceful lagoons and see people fishing and going about their daily business and everything is at it has been for many generations. But this is deceptive. We now know that we are being […]

China jails pollution protesters: state media

Shanghai, 7 February 2013 (AFP) – A Chinese court has jailed three people and given 13 others suspended sentences over their roles in a violent anti-pollution protest last year, state media said. A court in Qidong on Wednesday sentenced the individuals, who were among thousands who protested against a planned waste water pipeline at a […]

Advocates shocked by president's veto of Kenyan climate authority bill – ‘We can only hope the next parliament will rectify the anomaly’

By Maina Waruru11 February 2013 NAIROBI, Kenya (AlertNet) – Kenya’s hopes of becoming one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a body legally empowered to advise on mitigating the effects of climate change have hit a dead end, after President Mwai Kibaki rejected a law that would have created a Kenya Climate Change […]

Krugman: The Ignorance Caucus

By PAUL KRUGMAN10 February 2013 (The New York Times) – Last week Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, gave what his office told us would be a major policy speech. And we should be grateful for the heads-up about the speech’s majorness. Otherwise, a read of the speech might have suggested that he was offering […]

Many Americans believe recession is permanent – ‘We may be seeing the beginning of a new generation in American society: no longer millennials, but ‘recessionals’’

By Chad Brooks, BusinessNewsDaily Contributor 8 February 2013 (LiveScience.com) – Despite signs of an economic recovery, the Great Recession’s scope and impact was so widespread and corrosive that it has left millions of Americans permanently damaged financially, a new study finds. The research from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University […]

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