Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Superstorm Sandy: Tasting Apocalypse Now

By | |
6 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Lower Manhattan, lights out (except for that one building) watches Sandy approach and Braces for Impact. photo by Stefan Leijon/Flickr

Sandy has done us a great favor by giving us a preview of our new normal — a future in which storms assume the size of continents, “waterfront home” becomes an oxymoron and life — even the lives of the rich and famous — becomes much more tenuous.

Here’s what should happen now. First, there should be a national day of thanks for the climate scientists who braved our scorn and disbelief to insist we look at the reality and realize that superstorms like Sandy were going to be frequent from now on. Sandy has shown us in terms not up for argument, nor adjustable by one belief system or another, that those men and women of science were not Chicken-Little Climate Hawks,  they were American Eagles, harbingers of a bitter future we are bringing on ourselves. But wait there’s more. Continue reading →

Poll Vaulting into the Abyss

By | |
Comments Off on Poll Vaulting into the Abyss

According to a recent poll, most Americans believe in polls. (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Part of the reason that America and the other western democracies are circling the drain with increasing downward velocity is the vicious cycle that has been set up between polls and policy. Aided and abetted by industrial money, this process has done more than any other technique to dumb down the country’s policy discussions and cripple the government’s power to reign in corporate power. Continue reading →

New York Bans Fracking for Natural Gas

By | |
Comments Off on New York Bans Fracking for Natural Gas

That's a natural gas fracking well. You'd be well advised not to drink the water. (Photo by Daniel Foster/Flickr)

The contrast could not have been clearer. A lame-duck state governor who has little chance of holding public office again puts the safety of his people above the profits of the oil and gas industry; while the increasingly lame Obama administration waffles.

On Saturday, Governor David Paterson of New York — who did not run for a second term in the 2010 election — ordered a stop to all drilling for natural gas that involves hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Continue reading →