Environment and Health
Durban Diary: What’s on the Table?
There are hundreds of issues and interests at stake at the 2011 UN climate summit, as well as representatives of the 192 countries who signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. But just two questions are on everyone’s mind.
Durban Diary: UN Summit’s Stormy Backdrop
On Sunday night, as I met with colleagues from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America to prepare for the UN climate summit, the unseasonably blustery evening went from windy to rainy to huge downpour.
A Blizzard of Bad Climate News
A tsunami of scientific studies is showing that global warming isn’t only real, it’s happening faster than we thought and our window of opportunity to act is shrinking. This is very scary stuff.
Climate Denial Man
Big Corporation, Tiny Heart
Just a couple of years ago, this $408 billion-a-year retailing colossus tried to hush critics of its Dickensian labor policies by ballyhooing a bare-bones health care plan for its “associates.” The insurance scheme had such high deductibles, however, that barely half of its employees bought into it.
Welcoming Overdue Mercury Standards
As a mother with a toddler, I’m always trying to protect my daughter. From choking hazards to toxic household chemicals, from busy streets to steep stairs, there are a lot of dangers that keep us parents on our toes. Unfortunately, there are some toxins our children get exposed to before they are even born.
Tax Wall Street to Heal America
National Nurses United, America’s largest union of RNs, is sounding an alarm.
We’ve organized rallies in New York, Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Las Vegas, as well as in Minnesota, Michigan, Texas, Florida, and other states and cities. We’ve held demonstrations at 60 congressional field offices. And we’ve joined the Occupy Together movement as first aid volunteers in more than a dozen sites, including on Wall Street, where it all started.
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
