Environment and Health
Rebuilding Resilience
Our nation is recovering from a natural disaster. Again.
Shivering in the Land of Climate Denial
First, the 80-foot pine tree fell on our house. Then, the power went out, along with the heat. After a few days the indoor temperature became brisk, emulating the outdoors. But in our neighborhood at least, there was no ocean nearby to come calling.
Sandy Trumps Romney’s Climate Joke
A Nuclear Strike on States’ Rights
The 9/11 attacks made terrorist incidents at nuclear reactors appear much less hypothetical. After the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, concerned citizens grew more alarmed about the possibility of a catastrophic nuclear accident in our own country. And a struggle underway in Vermont over the future of its Yankee reactor is highlighting the threat that power companies can pose to our democratic process.
Fracking Liars
As they drill for quick corporate profits deep inside our Earth, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and other titans of the natural gas hydraulic fracturing industry are harming people’s health, the environment, and local economies all across the country. They’re also fracking something essential to a properly functioning democratic society: truth.
Why John Roberts Upheld the Affordable Care Act
Many Republicans expressed shock, even betrayal, when Chief Justice John Roberts himself turned out to be the Supreme Court’s turncoat Republican who upheld the Affordable Care Act. Pundits had predicted that Kennedy could make that move. Not me.
Just Don’t Say Climate Change
Our weather keeps getting weirder. We’re seeing record-busting heat waves, droughts, thaws, and forest fires, freakish “derecho” storms, and spring striking weeks too early. Most of these trends are either caused or exacerbated by another, underlying problem: climate change.
Cigarettes: The Killer that Won’t Die
Would you believe that 45 million adult Americans still smoke? That’s about one in five of us grownups. Worldwide this killer habit ends about six million lives each year. But what’s most disturbing — 10 percent of victims never even took a puff. They got their cancer from second-hand smoke.
Second-Hand Smoke
Radioactive Ties
Not only does corporate political money shout, scream, bellow, and bay in our elections, but afterwards it quietly slips into the back rooms of power to talk softly about payback.
