Monthly Archives: January 2010

Warning: Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous to Your Health

“Only 25 percent of the studies paid for by the industry showed effects, compared with 75 percent of those studies that were independently funded.”

Not “may.” There really isn’t any question about it.  The pattern, as in so many things, is that industry influence in the US has prevented research, discussion, and sound policy making.  But things are cooking in the rest of the world.

This is one of the most important articles you can read.

Turn of the transmitter of your router and plug your computer in with an Ethernet cable.  Minimize cell phone use and use a headset whenever possible….

am

Earlier this winter, I met an investment banker who was diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. Continue reading

Coal Ash update. Grist: “Enviros take action to counter the might of the coal ash lobby”

The effort comes the day after revelations from the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility that EPA has for years allowed coal ash industry representatives to edit official government reports, brochures, and fact sheets about coal ash to remove references to potential dangers and to emphasize alleged benefits.

“For most of the past decade, it appears that every EPA publication on the subject was ghostwritten by the American Coal Ash Association,” says PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, who examined thousands of communications between the industry and EPA. “In this partnership it is clear that industry is EPA’s senior partner.”

During the Bush administration, EPA entered into a formal partnership with the coal industry—especially the ACAA—to promote the use of coal ash for industrial, agricultural, and consumer products. The deal helped develop a multi-billion industry that is now fighting efforts to regulate the coal combustion byproducts—which contain dangerous levels of heavy metals and other toxins—as hazardous waste.

Read the whole post here.

Coal Ash Day of Action – TODAY – Join us in Calling the White House!

Coal ash threatens the health of Delaware’s people and environment from one end of the state to the other.

Just yesterday, in Legislative Hall, we heard an absurd proposal to “process” coal ash in an incinerator in the City of Wilmington.  (Again, per usual, this nutty idea is promoted by “Clean Air Council.”)  The promoters, Palmetto Energy Group, said they want to melt it and make “decorative tiles.”

Action to regulate coal ash as the hazardous waste it really is, is being blocked by lobbying at the White House (Office of Management and Budget) level.  Many examples can be found on the OMB website, including repeated meetings including representatives of DuPont. Continue reading

Letter sent to Del. Gov. Jack Markell on Jan 26, 2010

We’ll report on the response to this letter.

(Update: So far, Gov. Markell hasn’t answered this leter.  Ask him to, 1.800292.9570)

Green Delaware
Box 69, One Stewart Street
Port Penn, DE 19731 USA
302.834.3466
cell 302.299.6783
alan@greendel.org
www.greendel.org

January 26, 2010

Hon. Jack Markell

Governor of Delaware

Dear Governor Markell:

Green Delaware is concerned by reports from multiple sources that The Delaware Economic Development Office (DEDO) and Tom McGonigle of your office are actively promoting a “biomass” burner at the BASF plant in Newport, Delaware. Continue reading

“Republican Brown beats Coakley in special Senate election in Massachusetts”

Washington Post story.

“President Obama won the state by 26 points, and the entire congressional delegation is Democratic. What the Brown success tells me is that the electorate did not leave the Bush years liberalized; they left angry with bad and ineffective government.” (Alex Vogel, GOP strategist, as quoted in linked story.) Continue reading

Alert 672: “The real culprit is combustion itself ….”

(Thanks to Meg Sheehan of Ecolaw for a heads-up to this post.)

Most people who aren’t compromised probably get that if global warming is real, belching smokestacks aren’t the way to fix it.

I’ve come to suspect that one reason so many people don’t take climate change seriously is they can’t believe honest people would promote incinerating forests, manure, and garbage as “solutions.” The public is smelling scams. The public nose is working–climate policy has become a feeding frenzy of special interests who don’t give a damn about the future of anything but their pocketbooks. Continue reading

More on Haiti: “Witness to a nightmare”

Witness to a nightmare

January 18, 2010

Jesse Hagopian, a teacher in Seattle and contributor to SocialistWorker.org, was in Port-au-Prince with his 1-year-old son to visit his wife when the earthquake hit. His wife, an aid worker, works until six or seven in the evening on most days, but by sheer luck, she came to the hotel where they were staying early on Tuesday–just minutes before the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. This spared Jesse and his family agonizing hours or days trying to find one another amid the chaos. Continue reading

Martin Luther King: “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”

On this day, celebrated as “Martin Luther King Day” in the US, many are reminded in the mainstream media of King’s great “I have a dream” speech of August 28, 1963, in Washington, D.C.  And rightly so.

But that was not the end of the road for King.  His thinking broadened and evolved, in new directions that many were not willing to accept.  “King broke with
almost all  black clergy, who continued to support the Vietnam war, and lost many ‘establishment’ allies.   Rarely will you hear any of this speech on MLK Day, as King has been turned into an ‘antiseptic hero’ (in the words of Julian Bond).”

On April 4, 1967, in New York City, he said this:  “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

(listen here) Continue reading