Environment and Health
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.
Watching Out for Our Water
Water is at risk in the United States and around the world. Its quality and availability is in peril. Today, nearly one in eight people lack access to adequate supplies of safe drinking water. Globally, water-borne diseases kill more people than tuberculosis or malaria, and five times as many children die of diarrhea than of HIV/AIDS.
Our Non-Nuclear Future
Several decades ago, three expert nuclear engineers told a congressional panel why they decided to quit: “We could no longer justify devoting our life energies to the continued development and expansion of nuclear fission power — a system we believe to be so dangerous that it now threatens the very existence of life on this planet.”
Power Plays
Energy production is too vital to be left to private industry’s tender mercies. Therefore, sensible nations run that sector of the economy themselves. Unfortunately, there aren’t many sensible nations, and those that are often get invaded.
