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Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment

The scientific community has long agreed that our dependence on fossil fuels inflicts massive damage on the environment and our health, while warming the globe in the process. But beyond the damage these fuels cause to us now, what will happen when the world's supply of oil runs out? In a new video series from The Nation magazine and On The Earth Productions, Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and other scientists, researchers and writers explain. Visit TheNation.com for more videos in this series.

In the wake of paralyzing injury to a Rutgers student, and mounting evidence of permanent brain damage in many others, it's time for new approach to sports injuries: all-fault insurance.

As President Obama begins the second half of his term with a campaign for "jobs and competitiveness," we would do well to consider how he might achieve these worthy goals. It is jobs that matter most to the vast majority of Americans, and unemployment remains at 9.4 percent - about double its pre-recession level. This is a terrible punishment to inflict on millions of Americans who did nothing to deserve it. It will cause long-term and even permanent damage to many of the unemployed and their children.

The European Parliament has given its overwhelming support to a tax on financial transactions which, it said, could lead to banks paying as much as €200 billion a year in reparations for damage they have caused to the European economy.

A new UN report estimates that accounting for the environmental damage of the world's 3,000 biggest companies would wipe out one-third of their profits. Any precise figure, however, is a matter of how risk is quantified and of where you draw the line. In 2006, for example, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), of which I am the policy director, looked at the oil companies BP and Shell, who together had recently reported profits of £25bn. By applying the Treasury's own estimates of the social and environmental cost of carbon emissions, we calculated that the total bill for those costs would reach £46.5bn, massively outweighing profits and plunging the companies into the red.

Washington is in the grip of a fever. It's hard to find a word other than lunacy to describe what's going on. We are veering toward potential economic catastrophe. And Congress is hung up on a debate that shouldn't be occurring. It is debating an imaginary problem that conjures scary future scenarios but ignores dire existing circumstances. The consensus proffered solution to the imaginary problem would damage our country and further weaken our economy. Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads, but they are disagreeing primarily about how much harm they want to impose. That's a very consequential disagreement, but it ignores the fact that we don't need to impose any harm at all.

Economic historians will look back on this era as a time when policy-makers damaged Americans' welfare with ideologically driven, self-inflicted wounds.

September 13, 2011 - Many regulations that were originally scorned by politicians and industry as signaling the death of product lines, companies, and jobs - including those requiring more efficient light bulbs and banning chemicals that damage the ozone layer - in fact stimulated healthy innovations that have protected American lives and saved billions of dollars without harming industry, according to a report by Public Citizen. "Regulation: An Unsung Hero in American Innovation," describes five regulations that were originally excoriated but have resulted in innovations that improved public safety, helped the environment and led to better products. The report comes as public protections are under attack from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big business allies in Congress, who focus on the cost of rules while ignoring their public safety benefits and their potential to spur innovations.