By Harvey Wasserman
Online Journal Guest Writer
November 27, 2009

...As always, official announcements emphasize that the public was “in no danger.” That was an epic lie in 1979. This time Exelon’s Ralph DeSantis said things were rapidly “back to normal.”

DeSantis then said radiation could be quickly wiped off protective outfits, while “it takes two to three days for radiation to naturally leave the body of anyone who breathed it in.”

This is a ghastly lie. Among other isotopes, alpha and beta emitters -- especially from radioactive dust -- can easily lodge in the lungs and other internal organs long enough to damage cells and cause numerous forms of cancer, often lethal...

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Naomi Klein on Climate Debt: Why Rich Countries Should Pay Reparations To Poor Countries For The Climate Crisis.

DemocracyNow!
November 23, 2009

With the Copenhagen climate summit two weeks ago, best-selling journalist Naomi Klein examines the grass-roots movement behind the climate debate proposal that argues all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology—everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies—are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. Klein also discusses the 10th anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests and the 10th anniversary of her first book, “No Logo.”...

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Watchdog: New York State Regulation of Natural Gas Wells Has Been “Woefully Insufficient for Decades.”

DemocracyNow!
November 10, 2009

The New York-based Toxics Targeting went through the Department of Environmental Conservation’s own database of hazardous substances spills over the past thirty years. They found 270 cases documenting fires, explosions, wastewater spills, well contamination and ecological damage related to gas drilling. Many of the cases remain unresolved. The findings are contrary to repeated government assurances that existing natural gas well regulations are sufficient to safeguard the environment and public health. The state is considering allowing for gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale watershed, the source of drinking water for 15 million people, including nine million New Yorkers...

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EPA Drafts Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Strategy

by Richard Harris
National Public Radio
November 9, 2009

Monday, the Federal government announced the outlines of a new effort to help restore the seafood and wildlife in the nation's largest estuary: the Chesapeake Bay.

The plan injects the federal government into an issue that was largely left up to the states that surround the bay, such as Maryland and Virginia. And it targets the root causes of the trouble: runoff...

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Simple people

by Andrée Zaleska
Grist Magazine
November 4, 2009

I learned a lot about the relative definitions of prosperity by living in Europe in my twenties. (Czechoslovakia, 1990-92, the Czech Republic 1992-95. Same town, same apartment.) When I arrived, shortly after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, a four-member family was typically living in a high-rise apartment with one or two bedrooms. No kudos to the repressive and corrupt regimes of communist Eastern Europe, but material prosperity was adequate, and no one seems much happier 20 years later now that they all have new cars and TVs and debt...

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