Environment and Health
Obama: Reject the Tar Sands Pipeline
The seven members of Congress who signed a strongly worded letter to an Obama cabinet official on October 5 raised serious concerns about the administration’s cozy relationship with a high-profile energy company.
The GOP Loves the Federal Spending it Hates
In 2009, even as the Kentucky senator was loudly deriding Obama’s original stimulus program, he was quietly urging Obama’s energy secretary to give a quarter-billion-dollar loan guarantee to Zap Motors for a clean-energy plant it wanted to build in McConnell’s state.
Tar Sands
Big Oil: $135 Million — School Children: 0
When is it not enough to have too much? Apparently, when you’re a giant oil corporation.
Big Oil’s avaricious honchos are always searching for another dime they can slip into their corporate pockets, no matter whom it hurts. A crude example of their ceaseless money grab is presently unfolding in Texas.
Solyndra’s Implosion Burned Taxpayers
You may have heard about Solyndra, the solar start-up that went belly up in August.
The Environment Could Use Some Rich Friends
It seems likely that the environment here on Earth is doomed. Sure, we all want clean air, clean water, biodiversity, pretty coral, precious neighborhoods, and the like. But there are other things we seem to cherish even more: gasoline, air conditioning, heat, cheap food, bright lights, swift highways, and meat.
Big Tobacco Targets the Young and the Poor
“Tricky Dick” left us long ago, but many in the public health game consider him reincarnated in the tobacco industry. It’s hard to conjure up a business with less redeeming social value.
Paving the Way to 60 Miles per Gallon
Americans use a lot of oil every day: nearly 20 million barrels — or, if you prefer, 840 million gallons. About 9 million of these barrels go toward feeding our cars and trucks every day. What’s more, paying for all of this oil drains as much as $1 billion from our economy to foreign oil producers.
Thrifty, Green Homeowners May Get a Boost
While it might seem rare these days for Republicans and Democrats to work together on anything, two Republican members of the House of Representatives recently joined with one of their colleagues in the Democratic Party to introduce an important new piece of renewable energy legislation.
Dim Bulbs in Congress
Our problem in Washington is this: we have too many 5-watt bulbs sitting in 100-watt sockets.
