Red, Green, and Blue

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has signed two bills to expand job training opportunities in high-demand fields for Michigan workers. The bills allow the state’s community colleges to tailor job training to meet the needs of employers in their regions.

The jobs produced by the new training programs will not necessarily “green collar,” because they will vary depending on local market needs. But the emphasis Gov. Granholm has been putting on building the state’s clean energy manufacturing sector, for example, is creating new jobs in the state’s budding wind turbine manufacturing industry that require specific types of knowledge, skills, and abilities.

>>More on green collar jobs at RG&B

“We must do everything we can to help our citizens get the training they need for good-paying jobs in this challenging global economy,” Granholm said. “These bills are another part of our plan to ensure that we have a strong workforce that can compete and win in the 21st century.” Read the rest of this entry »

Without much of a fanfare, the British government has launched an enquiry that aims to secure the future of UK food until 2050.  It’s a committee process, led by Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and it will explore how well equipped Britain is to contribute to feeding a global population of 9 billion in forty years.  Read the rest of this entry »

Campaign politics dominated the headlines in 2008, making it a banner year for the armchair pundit and the politically uninitiated alike. 2008 was also a year that issues like energy use, climate change and carbon footprints came to the forefront of popular culture and political reality. And that’s where we came in.

In the tradition of more credible media outlets, we’ve compiled our most popular stories of the year into an easily digestible top 10 list. As it is based purely on pageviews, we realize that our list of the top ten environmental politics stories of the year is by no means scientific – and we’re okay with that.

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I’ve never really been one for making New Year’s resolutions. I have trouble being resolute about things because it gets in the way of my contingency. But that doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t make resolutions, nor does it mean they are necessarily void of any real utility. And Jeff Ruch, the Executive Director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) apparently thinks they can be useful as well. Ruch released a list of nine resolutions for the whistleblowing, watchdogging PEER for 2009.

Dear Tim,

In the New Year, PEER resolves to -

1. Free the political prisoners – not those in Guantanamo but the domestic whistleblowers who have suffered for speaking truth to perverse power. At the top of our list is returning Chief Teresa Chambers to the U.S. Park Police;

2. Protect scientists from political reprisal. We aim to enact new, tough whistleblower laws in ‘09 that include strong safeguards for scientists and their work. Along with new laws, we expect new, sane appointees administering these laws who have no reason to appear before grand juries;

3. Push for greenhouse gas regulations that work. Many of the global warming plans are more hot air than real curbs. PEER will provide EPA specialists charged with operating the system with a loud voice about what works and what doesn’t;

4. Make the Pentagon obey environmental laws. PEER will strive to return civilian oversight over out-of-control domestic military abuses;

5. Agitate for an effective federal response to off-road vehicle abuse. ORVs have become the top threat to American landscapes. The federal land management agencies need an effective enforcement and restoration strategy;

6. Follow the water. PEER programs to protect wetlands, curb prescription drug and other chemical contamination of drinking water and shield aquatic wildlife will all expand in ‘09;

7. End the use of infants, schoolchildren and other vulnerable populations for human subject experiments for pesticides and harmful chemicals. The gaping loopholes in the Bush human testing rules must be closed;

8. Focus land management agencies on their lands – not their minerals. From reviving a genuine park wilderness agenda to ceasing irresponsible energy leasing, PEER will use all the tools at our disposal; and

9. Provide a lifeline to public servants in crisis. When the moment of conflict between conscience and career arrives – who you gonna call?

Image: Paul Mannix via flickr under a Creative Commons License

There was no shortage of fodder for thoughtful political discussion in 2008. Not surprisingly, the bulk of the comments were directly related to the presidential election. Here we’ve compiled the nine most-discussed posts of 2008 so you can take a little walk down memory lane at Red, Green, and Blue.

9. McCain’s Colorado River Gaffe Might Cost Him Key Western States by Timothy B. Hurst

“John McCain has again said something to cause his fellow western-state Republicans to wince at his political inexpedience and apparent naivete for the issue at hand. And even though the Senator has now recanted and begun damage control, Democrats are hoping that this one will cost him. Some even argue that the gaffe was so severe, he may have just lost Colorado.”

8. Imagine a $700 Billion Bailout for the Environment by Jennifer Lance

One of the biggest stories of 2008 (and likely again in 2009) was the economic collapse and the ensuing expanding role of the U.S. Government in backing large corporations. On October 1st, Jennifer Lance considered what that kind of money could do for the environment: “I can’t help but wonder what a $700 billion bailout would do for the environment.  What if the US government had responded to the twenty years of dire warnings by James Hansen in the same manner as the current economic crisis?  Such an aggressive response may have stopped climate change and saved our economy through green jobs and technology.”

7. Schwarzenegger Jumps on Obama’s Proper Tire Inflation Bandwagon by Timothy B. Hurst

Separating himself from his party’s leadership (again), California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed the launch of EcoDriving USA, a new web portal aimed at sharing gas-saving tips. About the Republican misstep that gave such rich context to this launch, I wrote: “GOP strategists saw an opportunity to pounce on this bold claim by Senator Obama. And they, along with their friend Rush Limbaugh, lampooned and ridiculed Obama’s tire pressure assertion as a joke. The McCain campaign even went so far as handing out tire gauges branded with the slogan “Obama’s Energy Plan” to reporters traveling with Senator Obama. Let me just say this, whomever was in charge of that “brilliant” move at McCain HQ should be canned.” Read the rest of this entry »

A new United States Geological Survey (USGS) report has found that climate change is occurring more rapidly than previous studies have found. Melting ice in the Arctic and longer droughts in the Southwest indicate earlier projections have underestimated the climatic shifts that will take place by the end of the century.

Over two years, 32 scientists completed a new climate change survey that was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.  Although the results predict an increase in many climate change effects, the scientists have found that the release of methane from seabeds and permafrost will not abruptly change by 2100, but once it begins, there is no return. 

However, the USGS report did find that increasing sea levels and prolonged droughts in the Southwest will occur by mid-century as a result of climate change. Read the rest of this entry »

Whether you’re (still) trying to figure out what to get that hard to shop for greenie for Christmas or you’re looking for a good book to hunker down with over the holidays, a new volume edited by Bill McKibben and titled American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau is so packed with high-quality writing it is literally hard to put down.

McKibben, well known for his environmental writings, including The End of Nature (1989), the first book for a general audience about global warming, and more recently, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (2007), has compiled the foundational writings of American environmentalism and stuffed them into a 1,000 page epic tome that anyone with a green bone in their body would love to add to their bookshelf. Read the rest of this entry »

Could this be the most environmentally destructive lame duck president ever?

Yes.

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Many bloggers and webmasters are wont to check their stats so often it borders on behavior that could be classified as obsessive-compulsive. Fortunately, that is how the folks behind the scenes at the New Orleans-based activist group, Levees.org learned that the harassing comments being left at their blog were coming from computers registered to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Well, maybe they weren’t OC about checking their stats, but after this incident, I’m guessing they just might be now.

Levees.org is a watchdog activist group that is pushing for an independent analysis of the “failure of the federal flood protection system” in metro New Orleans on August 29, 2005.” The group’s founder, Sandy Rosenthal did some digging into her stats after an unusually high volume of “negative comments” began rolling into the blog.

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An environmental activist threw “into chaos” the Bureau of Land Management auction of leases on federal lands for oil and gas development recently approved by outgoing president George Bush. The sale has been characterized by the Natural Resources Defense Council as a “Midnight Land Sale” of 110,000 acres near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Dinosaur National Monument, and Nine Mile Canyon. The auction on Friday was disrupted by a bidder who “tainted the entire auction” by bidding the price up on several parcels of land by hundreds of thousand of dollars with no real intention of paying for the bids.

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