Nuclear power advocates want billions of tax dollars to resurrect failed SC reactor project By Meteor Blades The two uncompleted reactors were part of what was meant to be a renaissance of U.S. nuclear power construction after a 30-year hiatus. Background: After blowing $10 billion, power companies give up on 2 more nuke plants Rather than individually […]
Without justice, there can be no environmental justice. The year my mother moved the two of us from southwest Georgia—1956—was the same year the legislature there chose to unfurl a new state flag in defiance of the desegregation mandate of the Supreme Court’s unanimous Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The lawmakers chose the most prominent part […]
Elizabeth Warren, the Progressive powerhouse senator from Massachusetts gave a rousing, upbeat, 31-minute speech in Atlanta at the Netroots Nation conference Saturday morning. And while she attacked the way the system is rigged, she has hope – because we’re fighting to fix it. By Meteor Blades You can watch it all here (STARTING AT 47:00 into […]
Until now, Ronald Reagan-appointed Anne Gorsuch Burford [mother of nepotastic stolen-seat Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch] was the worst administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in its nearly half-century of existence. She cut its budget by a fifth and worked diligently to please polluting industries that she claimed were over-regulated. She was just one appointee […]
Since long before the founding of the Republic, the settler populations from the Puritans onward did their best to wipe out the indigenous peoples of what is now the United States. By Meteor Blades The vast majority of American Indians—likely in their millions—were killed by European-brought diseases. But public policy, spoken and written, was predicated on extermination, sometimes […]
As the news appeared this week about U.S. Department of Agriculture employees being told to avoid the term “climate change” in their work, the draft of a new report on climate change also appeared. That report, published Monday by The New York Times, is, according to Katharine Hayhoe, a professor of political science at Texas Tech University, among “the most comprehensive climate science reports” […]
The U.S. nuclear “renaissance” goes the way critics said it likely would – down the tubes. By Meteor Blades The South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper have abandoned two Westinghouse reactors they spent $10 billion on. The reactors were supposed to make building nuclear power plants quicker and cheaper, enabling the industry to launch a bunch of new […]
In a ruling issued Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia smacked the Environmental Protection Agency again, requiring that it immediately begin enforcing an Obama administration rule that set standards for the oil and natural gas industry’s methane emissions. By Meteor Blades The Trump regime had issued […]
Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico and seven other Democratic senators introduced a bill Tuesday to regulate or ban a neurotoxic insecticide if the Environmental Protection Agency cannot prove it is safe. An organophosphate, the insecticide named chlorpyrifos has been banned from household use for more than 15 years, but it’s still widely used on crops like broccoli and almonds. By […]
Sonny Perdue, the political hack appointed to be secretary of agriculture, once labeled mainstream climate science “so ridiculous and so obviously disconnected from reality.” As if having a science denier running the Department of Agriculture weren’t disastrous enough, Pr*sident Trump has now, as expected, picked another political hack—a former right-wing talk-radio host named Sam Clovis—to be the undersecretary of research, education, […]
“Bizarre” is too kind a word to describe the interview The New York Times conducted Wednesday with the man squatting in the White House. It was brimful of the narcissism, nastiness, and delusionary nonsense that we have come to expect from Donald J. Trump in his six months pretending to be the best president America has ever had. By […]
Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency-hating chief of the EPA, wants to have a televised debate among scientists on climate change. When my colleague Mark Sumner read the news about this, he pictured a climate Thunderdome in which two scientists enter and a hunk of the public leaves still believing that there really is a debate to be had. By […]
While Donald Frederickovich was making nice with Vladimir Vladimirovich and having daughter Ivanka keep his seat warm at the adults table during parts of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the assembled leaders struggled to come up with climate language in their final communique that the world’s 20 richest nations could all agree to. Thanks to the stubborn climate […]
As the nation prepared for the holiday weekend last Friday, 17 tea party Republicans—members of the Congressional Western Caucus—sent a letter to secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke asking that he downsize or eliminate 27 national monuments across the western United States. By Meteor Blades Although the Western Caucus is theoretically open to anyone in Congress, all 70 members […]
In case you missed it, a divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency-hating EPA administrator, overstepped his authority by delaying enforcement of the standards in a rule designed by the Obama administration to reduce methane emissions from new equipment at oil and gas operations. The court ordered Pruitt to […]