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Alex Parker

Behind the US EPA's 'war on coal' - Industry squares up for a fight - 1 views

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    The US Environmental Protection Agency has been accused of 'waging a war' on coal after announcing proposals to reduce CO2 emitted by coal-fired power plants. Industry has called the proposals "extreme" and "ill-advised" and it is poised for a fight. But should the EPA be the coal industry's only concern?
Skeptical Debunker

NYT: Many polluters escape prosecution - The New York Times- msnbc.com - 0 views

  • Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators. As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising. Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad heredap('&PG=NBCMSN&AP=1089','300','250');The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.
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    The best "justice" money can buy via packing the Supreme Court with "conservatives" is bearing smelly, polluted fruit. Specifically, those "conservatives" are showing themselves to be "activist judges" in "watering down" conservation and public safety laws passed by Congress. Polluting "business" entities are apparently NOT to be considered to be within the oft-quoted and loved "conservative" limitation of the purview of the federal government to merely protect the populace from "enemies foreign and domestic". That this pollution kills and injures thousands (and poisons the environment for the countless of the "unborn") apparently doesn't matter (but if Al Qaeda was doing it, then complete suspension of all domestic rights would be justified to "fight" that!). Pictured: In 2007, a pipe maker was fined millions of dollars for dumping oil, lead and zinc into Avondale Creek in Alabama. A court ruled the waterway was exempt from the Clean Water Act. The firm eventually settled by agreeing to pay a smaller amount and submit to probation.
Benno Hansen

How the 1% Pillage the Environment | AlterNet - 1 views

  • when there’s money to be made, both workers and the environment are expendable
  • If you are a CEO who skims millions of dollars off other people’s labor, it’s called a “bonus.”  If you are a flood victim who breaks into a sporting goods store to grab a lifejacket, it’s called looting.  If you lose your job and fall behind on your mortgage, you get evicted.  If you are a banker-broker who designed flawed mortgages that caused a million people to lose their homes, you get a second-home vacation-mansion near a golf course.
  • The 1% are willing to spend billions impeding democratic initiatives, which is why every so-called environmental issue is also about building a democratic culture.
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  • If you drag heavy fishnets across the ocean floor and pulverize an entire ecosystem, ending thousands of years of dynamic evolution and depriving future generations of a healthy ocean, it’s called free enterprise.  But if, like Tim DeChristopher, you disrupt an auction of public land to oil and gas companies, it’s called a crime and you get two years in jail.   
  • Tearing apart wildlife habitat to make a profit and doing the same at a workplace are just considered the price of doing business. Clearcutting a forest and clearcutting a labor force are two sides of the same coin. 
  • The desperate effort to grow the economy to solve our economic woes is what keeps Timothy Geithner at the helm of the Treasury and is what stalls the regulation of greenhouse gasses.  It’s why we are told we must sacrifice environmental quality for pipelines and why young men and women are sacrificed to protect access to oil, the lubricant for an acquisitive economic engine.
  • we have built an all-encompassing economic engine that requires unending growth.  A contraction of even a percent or two is a crisis, and yet we are embedded in ecosystems that are reaching or have reached their limits.
  • Like so much else these days, the crash, as it happens, will not be suffered in equal measure by all of us.  The one percenters will be atop the hill, while the 99% will be in the flood lands below swimming for their lives, clinging to debris, or drowning.
  • Degrading the planet’s operating systems to bolster the bottom line is foolish and reckless.  It hurts us all.  No less important, it’s unfair.  The 1% profit, while the rest of us cough and cope. After Occupy Wall Street, isn’t it time for Occupy Earth?
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