NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?

By Norman Solomon
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Thursday 27 March 2008
To view original click here.

While the Iraqi government continued its large-scale military assault in Basra, the NPR reporter's voice from Iraq was unequivocal on the morning of March 27: "There is no doubt that this operation needed to happen."

Such flat-out statements, uttered with journalistic tones and without attribution, are routine for the US media establishment. In the "War Made Easy" documentary film, I put it this way: "If you're pro-war, you're objective. But if you're antiwar, you're biased. And often, a news anchor will get no flak at all for making statements that are supportive of a war and wouldn't dream of making a statement that's against a war."

So it goes at NPR News, where - on "Morning Edition" as well as the evening program "All Things Considered" - the sense and sensibilities tend to be neatly aligned with the outlooks of official Washington. The critical aspects of reporting largely amount to complaints about policy shortcomings that are tactical; the underlying and shared assumptions are imperial. Washington's prerogatives are evident when the media window on the world is tinted red, white and blue.

Earlier in the week - a few days into the sixth year of the Iraq war - "All Things Considered" aired a discussion with a familiar guest.

"To talk about the state of the war and how the US military changes tactics to deal with it," said longtime anchor Robert Siegel, "we turn now to retired Gen. Robert Scales, who's talked with us many times over the course of the conflict."

This is the sort of introduction that elevates a guest to truly expert status - conveying to the listeners that expertise and wisdom, not just opinions, are being sought.

Siegel asked about the progression of assaults on US troops over the years: "How have the attacks and the countermeasures to them evolved?"

Naturally, General Scales responded with the language of a military man. "The enemy has built ever-larger explosives," he said. "They've found clever ways to hide their IEDs, their roadside bombs and even more diabolical means for detonating these devices."

We'd expect a retired American general to speak in such categorical terms - referring to "the enemy" and declaring in a matter-of-fact tone that attacks on US troops became even more "diabolical." But what about an American journalist?

Well, if the American journalist is careful to function with independence instead of deference to the Pentagon, then the journalist's assumptions will sound different than the outlooks of a high-ranking US military officer.

In this case, an independent reporter might even be willing to ask a pointed question along these lines: You just used the word "diabolical" to describe attacks on the US military by Iraqis, but would that ever be an appropriate adjective to use to describe attacks on Iraqis by the US military?

In sharp contrast, what happened during the "All Things Considered" discussion on March 24 was a conversation of shared sensibilities. The retired US Army general discussed the war effort in terms notably similar to those of the ostensibly independent journalist - who, along the way, made the phrase "the enemy" his own in a follow-up question.

It wouldn't be fair to judge an entire news program on the basis of a couple of segments. But I'm a frequent listener to "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition." Such cozy proximity of worldviews, blanketing the war maker and the war reporter, is symptomatic of what ails NPR's war coverage - especially from Washington.

Of course, there are exceptions. Occasional news reports stray from the narrow baseline. But the essence of the propaganda function is repetition, and the exceptional does not undermine that function.

To add insult to injury, NPR calls itself public radio. It's supposed to be willing to go where commercial networks fear to tread. But overall, when it comes to politics and war, the range of perspectives on National Public Radio isn't any wider than what we encounter on the avowedly commercial networks.

Naked Campaign

It's a Number

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t Columnist
Tuesday 25 March 2008
To view original click here.

You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead. Hmmmm. But what do the dead say?
- Dalton Trumbo, "Johnny Got His Gun"

White House press secretary Tony Snow, the third man to hold that post in the Bush administration since 2001, began the June 15, 2006, noon press briefing with a few prepared remarks before opening the floor to questions from the assembled crowd of reporters. The first to speak noted, "American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500," before asking, "Is there any response or reaction from the president on that?"

"It's a number," replied Snow, "and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something."

As of that June day in 2006, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq had reached "one of these 500 benchmarks" for a fifth time since the 2003 invasion. Snow's unabashed dismissal of the grim reality that number represented was as vile as it was predictable, a perfect illustration of the administration's cold indifference and demented priorities. It's a number. It's a benchmark. People want something. Next question.

On Monday, that benchmark was reached for an eighth time. Four US soldiers were killed late Sunday when their vehicle was bombed in south Baghdad, bringing the total number of American troops lost in Iraq to 4,000. It's a number. It's a benchmark. People want something. Next question.

Last year's military escalation in Iraq was touted by the Bush administration as a can't-fail solution to the carnage and chaos of a ferocious sectarian civil war they refused to acknowledge even existed. It was a tough sell from the beginning, or so it seemed back then, as every poll of public opinion on Iraq and all things Bush said a large majority of Americans believed attacking Iraq was a comprehensively bad idea, and the occupation of Iraq needed to end soon so the troops may come home. Those same polls, when crunched in the proper fashion, also had an even larger majority of Americans coming to the conclusion George W. Bush was more popular than contracting shingles while drowning in a vat of lemon juice, but just barely.

Clearly, there was branding to be done if Bush's legacy and signature foreign policy program were to be salvaged. Thus, those same linguistic wizards from the White House who came up with the "Clear Skies Initiative" label to disguise both the comprehensive deregulation of environmental protections and the carnival of unbridled pollution it produced; those same wizards who duped everyone including Teddy Kennedy into believing "No Child Left Behind" was anything other than a bonfire lit beneath public education standards; those same wizards who deployed comments like "plastic sheeting and duct tape" and "Islamofascist" and "Bring 'em on" to make sure everyone was afraid, aggressive and ignorant in equal measure; those same wizards who convinced Americans things like privacy and liberty and rights and the Constitution were quaint and dangerous anachronisms we need to abandon before the terrorists use them to destroy America; those same wizards were also able to gloss over the escalation of a hopeless war with another vacant, vapid and now-ubiquitous euphemism known as "The Surge."

"The Surge" was going to lead us out of Iraq, at first, kinda, until "The Surge" became the main argument for why we had to stay in Iraq for now, until a date to be determined later, or maybe not for another hundred years, give or take, according to a war hero who survived unimaginable torture so he could become the GOP's presidential standard-bearer and be for the torture of anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances and in the name of America, before he was against it, as far as anyone knows, or something.

"The Surge" was keeping American soldiers safe, sort of, except for those four American soldiers who died on Monday, except for those 600 American soldiers who died during "The Surge," and even though "The Surge" was supposed to make it harder for American soldiers to die, even though "The Surge" began as a finite thing but became an indefinite action that smells like another reason to stay in Iraq forever, none of that matters because the consensus seems to be "The Surge" is good and so America is winning and all is right with the world.

Leave off the fact that a married couple and their three sons died when either a rocket or a mortar hit their central Baghdad home, that two people died and seven were wounded by mortars in central Baghdad, that another person died in an attack in eastern Baghdad, that six dead bodies were discovered all across Baghdad, that four Iraqi soldiers were killed while on patrol near Kirkuk, that gunmen killed a police lieutenant and wounded two other police officers in central Baquba, that a suicide car bomber killed six or more people and wounded ten in northwestern Baghdad, that a suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi army base and killed 13 soldiers while wounding 42 others in Mosul, that a suicide car bomber killed one soldier and wounded eight others in Mosul, that gunmen killed seven people and wounded 16 others in southern Baghdad, that a roadside bomb wounded two people in central Baghdad, that a Katyusha rocket was fired into the Green Zone, killed five people and wounde d eight in eastern Baghdad, that gunmen murdered Colonel Akram Awad al-Omairi, commander of a rapid reaction unit outside his home in the town of Abu Saida, and that a suicide car bomb killed five people and wounded 11 north of Baghdad.

That was Sunday.

Four more American soldiers were killed in Iraq. Four thousand Americans have died in Iraq since that first bright idea for invasion and occupation was realized in 2003. The press won't touch the subject, because they are just as much to blame as anyone, and there are actually still a few who try to argue it was a bully idea to butcher 4,000 American volunteers and nobody knows how many others in the process, but that's only on Fox News. The politicians of both parties won't touch this, except to give speeches from a distance, because most of them have blood on their hands. The Bush administration just wants us to hear their rosy "any-day-now" balderdash and nothing else, because they have a job to do that has nothing to do with how you feel or where you stand or who you love.

It's a number. It's a benchmark. People want something. Next question.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.

Sunflower Electric Power: Carbon Risks Outweigh Benefits of Holcomb Expansion

I have the complete report available as a PDF file. If you would liek to have a copy, e-mail your requests to renner@ksu.edu. I can't put downloads on this webpage.


Executive Summary Innovest Strategic Value Advisors - March 2008

The following report examines how current and proposed regulatory scenarios, alternatives to coal-fired generation,stakeholder opposition, and rising construction costs continue to shift the competitive balance away from coal-firedgeneration. Furthermore, this analysis includes an in-depth financial assessment of the benefits of constructing gas powerplants over coal power plants in a carbon constrained economy. This report demonstrates the fact that Sunflower has notadequately addressed the financial risks associated with the CO2 output from the proposed Holcomb Station. As a result, Sunflower, a consumer-owned nonprofit corporation, is putting its ratepayers and owners at significant risk.Although the proposed expansion of the Holcomb Station plant would provide Sunflower with additional baseload generatingcapacity, the carbon risks associated with an increased reliance on coal present significant financial risks for the company’sowners and ratepayers. Given that Sunflower is a consumer-owned cooperative, the burden of future carbon costs will beplaced entirely on the company’s ratepayers. Assuming carbon prices between $21 and $48 per tonne, the Holcombexpansion could cost Sunflower ratepayers between $22.4 million and $51.36 million annually. Furthermore, Innovestanalysis demonstrates that under federal legislation that relies on 100% auctioning of emissions allowances, natural gasgeneration becomes more economical at a carbon price of $13.20 per tonne. In conclusion, this analysis indicates thatSunflower has failed to account for likely regulatory scenarios, and will therefore expose its ratepayers to the significantfinancial exposure associated with a strategic focus on developing new coal capacity.

Families Torn by Citizenship for Fallen

The Associated Press
Sunday 23 March 2008

A young, ambitious immigrant from Guatemala who dreamed of becoming an architect. A Nigerian medic. A soldier from China who boasted he would one day become an American general. An Indian native whose headstone displays the first Khanda, emblem of the Sikh faith, to appear in Arlington National Cemetery.

These were among more than 100 foreign-born members of the U.S. military who earned American citizenship by dying in Iraq.

Jose Gutierrez was one of the first to fall, killed by friendly fire in the dust of Umm Qasr in the opening hours of the invasion.

In death, the young Marine was showered with honors his family could only have dreamed of in life. His sister was flown in from Guatemala for his memorial service, where a Roman Catholic cardinal presided and top military officials saluted his flag-draped coffin.

And yet, his foster mother agonized as she accompanied his body back for burial in Guatemala City: Why did Jose have to die for America in order to truly belong?

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who oversaw Gutierrez's service, put it differently.

"There is something terribly wrong with our immigration policies if it takes death on the battlefield in order to earn citizenship," Mahony wrote to President Bush in April 2003. He urged the president to grant immediate citizenship to all immigrants who sign up for military service in wartime.

"They should not have to wait until they are brought home in a casket," Mahony said.

But as the war continues, more and more immigrants are becoming citizens in death - and more and more families are grappling with deeply conflicting feelings about exactly what the honor means.

Gutierrez's citizenship certificate - dated to his death on March 21, 2003, - was presented during a memorial service in Lomita, Calif., to Nora Mosquera, who took in the orphaned teen after he had trekked through Central America, hopping freight trains through Mexico before illegally sneaking into the U.S.

"On the one hand I felt that citizenship was too late for him," Mosquera said. "But I also felt grateful and very proud of him. I knew it would open doors for us as a family."

"What use is a piece of paper?" cried Fredelinda Pena after another emotional naturalization ceremony, this one in New York City where her brother's framed citizenship certificate was handed to his distraught mother. Next to her, the infant daughter he had never met dozed in his fiancee's arms.

Cpl. Juan Alcantara, 22, a native of the Dominican Republic, was killed Aug. 6, 2007, by an explosive in Baqouba. He was buried by a cardinal and eulogized by a congressman but to his sister, those tributes seemed as hollow as citizenship.

"He can't take the oath from a coffin," she sobbed.

There are tens of thousands of foreign-born members in the U.S. armed forces. Many have been naturalized, but more than 20,000 are not U.S. citizens.

"Green card soldiers," they are often called, and early in the war, Bush signed an executive order making them eligible to apply for citizenship as soon as they enlist. Previously, legal residents in the military had to wait three years.

Since Bush's order, nearly 37,000 soldiers have been naturalized. And 109 who lost their lives have been granted posthumous citizenship.

They are buried with purple hearts and other decorations, and their names are engraved on tombstones in Arlington as well as in Mexico and India and Guatemala.

Among them:

• Marine Cpl. Armando Ariel Gonzalez, 25, who fled Cuba on a raft with his father and brother in 1995 and dreamed of becoming an American firefighter. He was crushed by a refueling tank in southern Iraq on April 14, 2003.
• Army Spc. Justin Onwordi, a 28-year-old Nigerian medic whose heart seemed as big as his smiling 6-foot-4 frame and who left behind a wife and baby boy. He died when his vehicle was blown up in Baghdad on Aug. 2, 2004.
• Army Pfc. Ming Sun, 20, of China who loved the U.S. military so much he planned to make a career out of it, boasting that he would rise to the rank of general. He was killed in a firefight in Ramadi on Jan. 9, 2007.
• Army Spc. Uday Singh, 21, of India, killed when his patrol was attacked in Habbaniyah on Dec. 1, 2003. Singh was the first Sikh to die in battle as a U.S. soldier, and it is his headstone at Arlington that displays the Khanda.
• Marine Lance Cpl. Patrick O'Day from Scotland, buried in the California rain as bagpipes played and his 19-year-old pregnant wife told mourners how honored her 20-year-old husband had felt to fight for the country he loved.

"He left us in the most honorable way a man could," Shauna O'Day said at the March 2003 Santa Rosa service. "I'm proud to say my husband is a Marine. I'm proud to say my husband fought for our country. I'm proud to say he is a hero, my hero."

Not all surviving family members feel so sure. Some parents blame themselves for bringing their child to the U.S. in the first place. Others face confusion and resentment when they try to bury their child back home.

At Lance Cpl. Juan Lopez's July 4, 2004, funeral in the central Mexican town of San Luis de la Paz, Mexican soldiers demanded that the U.S. Marine honor guard surrender their arms, even though the rifles were ceremonial. Earlier, the Mexican Defense Department had denied the Marines' request to conduct the traditional 21-gun salute, saying foreign troops were not permitted to bear arms on Mexican soil.

And so mourners, many deeply opposed to the war, witnessed an extraordinary 45-minute standoff that disrupted the funeral even as Lopez's weeping widow was handed his posthumous citizenship by a U.S. embassy official.

The same swirl of conflicting emotions and messages often overshadows the military funerals of posthumous citizens in the U.S.

Smuggled across the Mexican border in his mother's arms when he was 2 months old, Jose Garibay was just 21 when he died in Nasiriyah. The Costa Mesa police department made him an honorary police officer, something he had hoped one day to become. America made him a citizen.

But his mother, Simona Garibay, couldn't conceal her bewilderment and pain. It seemed, she said in interviews after the funeral, that more value was being placed on her son's death than on his life.

Immigrant advocates have similar mixed feelings about military service. Non-citizens cannot become officers or serve in high-security jobs, they note, and yet the benefits of citizenship are regularly pitched by recruiters, and some recruitment programs specifically target colleges and high schools with predominantly Latino students.

"Immigrants are lured into service and then used as political pawns or cannon fodder," said Dan Kesselbrenner, executive director of the National Immigration Project, a program of the National Lawyers Guild. "It is sad thing to see people so desperate to get status in this country that they are prepared to die for it."

Others question whether non-citizens should even be permitted to serve. Mark Krikorian of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, argues that defending America should be the job of Americans, not non-citizens whose loyalty might be suspect. In granting special benefits, including fast-track citizenship, Krikorian says, there is a danger that soldiering will eventually become yet another job that Americans won't do.

And yet, immigrants have always fought - and died - in America's wars.

During the Cvil War, the Union army recruited Irish and German immigrants off the boat. Alfred Rascon, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, received the Medal of Honor for acts of bravery during the Vietnam war. In the 1990s, Gen. John Shalikashvili, born in Poland after his family fled the occupied Republic of Georgia, became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After the Iraq invasion, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico fielded hundreds of requests from Mexicans offering to fight in exchange for citizenship. They mistakenly believed that Bush's order also applied to nonresidents.

The right to become an American is not automatic for those who die in combat. Families must formally apply for citizenship within two years of the soldier's death, and not all choose to do so.

"He's Italian, better to leave it like that," Saveria Romeo says of her 23-year-old son, Army Staff Sgt. Vincenzo Romeo, who was born in Calabria, died in Iraq and is buried in New Jersey. A miniature Italian flag marks his grave, next to an American one.

"What good would it do?" she says. "It won't bring back my son."

But it would allow her to apply for citizenship for herself, a benefit only recently offered to surviving parents and spouses. Until 2003 posthumous citizenship was granted only through an act of Congress and was purely symbolic. There were no benefits for next of kin.

Romeo says she has no desire to apply. She says she couldn't bear to benefit in any way from her son's death. And besides, she feels Italian, not American.

Fernando Suarez del Solar just feels angry - angry at what he considers the futility of a war that claimed his only son, angry at the military recruiters he says courted young Jesus relentlessly even when the family still lived in Tijuana.

His son was just 13, Suarez del Solar said, when he was first dazzled by Marine recruiters in a California mall. For the next two years Jesus begged the family to emigrate and eventually they did, settling in Escondido, Calif., where the teen signed up for the Marines before he left high school.

Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez Del Solar was 20 when he was killed by a bomb in the first week of the war. He left behind a wife and baby and parents so bitter about his death that they eventually divorced.

Today, his 52-year-old father has become an outspoken peace activist who travels the country organizing anti-war marches, giving speeches and working with counter-recruitment groups to dissuade young Latinos from joining the U.S. military.

"There is nothing in my life now but saving these young people," he says. "It is just something I feel have to do."

But first he had to journey to Iraq. He had to see for himself the dusty stretch of wasteland where his son became an American. In tears, he planted a small wooden cross. And he prayed for his son - and for all the other immigrants who became citizens in death.

Toward a New New Deal (Forum)

The Nation
07 April 2008 Issue

Seventy-five years ago, facing the catastrophic, worldwide failure of the free market, Franklin Roosevelt launched what is perhaps the greatest democratic experiment of the twentieth century. Touching nearly every aspect of American life, the New Deal transformed banking, business, labor, agriculture, arts and literature, urban and rural landscapes and, of course, the relationship of citizens to government itself. Today, decades of conservative rule have jeopardized much of the New Deal's legacy. Many of its reforms and regulations have been gutted, and much of the infrastructure it built crumbles from neglect. Yet the New Deal endures, not just in institutions like the FDIC and Social Security but in the very idea that where and when there is crisis government should rise to the challenge for the good of the common people. How can a look back help us confront the challenges of the present - from the tangled housing, credit and financial market crises to global warming to the small-mindedness of public policy and debate today? What is the unfinished business of the New Deal? And what can we learn from its failures and limitations? On this historic occasion we asked an esteemed collection of activists, writers, scholars and artists to reflect on the "usable past" of the New Deal. Their answers follow.

Featuring:

Bill McKibben: A Green Corps
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/mckibben

Michael J. Copps: Not Your Father's FCC
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/copps

Andrea Batista Schlesinger: A Chaos of Experimentation
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/schlesinger

Eric Schlosser: The Bare Minimum
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/schlosser

Frances Moore Lappé: The Only Fitting Tribute
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/lappe

Adolph Reed Jr.: Race and the New Deal Coalition
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/reed

The Rev. Jesse Jackson: For the 'FDR'
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/jackson

Andy Stern: Labor's New Deal
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/stern

Anna Deavere Smith: Potent Publics
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/smith

Sherle R. Schwenninger: Democratizing Capital
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/schwenninger

Stephen Duncombe: FDR's Democratic Propaganda
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/duncombe

Howard Zinn: Beyond the New Deal
http://thenation.com/doc/20080407/zinn

The Rising Price of Coal

By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Environment Editor
Friday 21 March 2008

To view original click here.

As the global energy/climate crisis deepens, coal has become the starkest symbol and most telling measure of our predicament. Coal produces more carbon emissions than other energy sources - more than twice that of natural gas per unit of energy output. Consequently, coal-fired power plants are responsible for about one-third of US emissions of carbon dioxide. Despite this, we are mining and burning more coal than ever.

On March 18, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) released an analysis of EPA data showing that carbon dioxide emissions from the electric power industry increased by 2.9 percent in 2007 and have risen 5.9 percent since 2002. Coal is the culprit.

According to an Associated Press report, the cause of last year's increase was a combination of three factors: increased electricity demand; a shortage of hydroelectric power, leading to greater reliance on coal, and the reduced efficiency of aging coal-burning power plants.

While utilities around the nation have plans to construct more than 100 new coal-fired power plants, public concern over global warming and toxic pollution has put the brakes on many of them. Last year in Texas, public interest groups prevented TXU Energy from going ahead on eight new coal-fired plants that would have increased the state's emissions by 24 percent, according to the EIP report.

But as demand for electricity rises and cleaner fuels like natural gas get scarcer and more expensive, the relentless pressure to burn coal fuels delusions such as "clean coal."

"Clean coal" is a combination of two technologies, one of which is expensive and the other completely unproven. The expensive one is coal gasification, and it is a genuinely cleaner way of burning coal. It involves baking coal to drive off gasses that aren't much dirtier than natural gas, and the gasses then are burned for power production. This technology costs a minimum of 20 percent more than a conventional pulverized coal plant, which is why only two such plants exist in the United States.

The other part of the "clean coal" scheme involves carbon capture and storage. This technology is not proven and the potential costs are enormous. A US Department of Energy pilot project called FutureGen was recently canceled with the DOE citing soaring cost projections among its reasons for ending the project.

But even if the "clean coal" idea were workable, the realities of the coal fuel cycle ensure that coal can never be truly clean.

At the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Oregon, in early March, a panel of citizen activists talked about the front and back ends of coal use: mining and waste disposal. Teri Blanton, of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth spoke about the heartbreak of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. The mining technique is dynamiting hundreds of thousand of acres of biologically diverse forest ecosystems to get at the coal underneath, and dumping the waste into streams. Blanton told the story of one of her neighbors who lost his land to a mining company. "When I say he lost his land," she said, "I mean he literally lost his land. One day he found that his land was just gone, blasted away to nothing."

According to the group Appalachian Voices, more than 800 square miles of mountains have already been destroyed by mountaintop removal and if the blasting continues unabated it will devastate an area the size of Delaware by 2010.

Coal mining also uses great quantities of water and pollutes streams in the process. Slurries of waste laden with toxic heavy metals are leaching into streams and river systems. Earthen impoundments that hold back the sludge are unstable and threaten communities. A sludge dam breach in 2000 in Martin County, Kentucky, dumped more than 300 million gallons of toxic sludge, killing virtually all aquatic life for 70 miles downstream of the spill.

Brad Bartlett of the Energy Minerals Law Center talked about the post-combustion end of coal. Air pollution controls at existing coal plants capture 125 million tons of pollutants, amounting to "the largest solid waste stream in the US," according to Bartlett. He said that it is not formally regulated as hazardous waste despite the presence of heavy metals and other toxins. Some of it is used to make building materials and roads, but the rest is just landfilled.

When you think of Alaska, you usually think of oil, not coal, but Vanessa Salinas of Alaskans for Responsible Mining said that Alaska also has huge amounts of coal - about one-eighth of the world's coal reserves and half of US coal reserves. Currently there is only one operating coal mine in Alaska, but BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world, is conducting an extensive coal exploration program and four new strip mines are being proposed.

Alaskans should be more concerned than most people, Salinas said, because global warming impacts are being felt more strongly in the Arctic than anywhere else. On February 26, the tiny village of Kivalina sued two dozen oil, power and coal companies over their greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Melting sea ice is exposing the village to erosion from storm waves and surges.

Coal burning also threatens Alaska's famed fishing industry. Coal is notorious for its mercury pollution, and older marine fish are showing increasing levels of mercury. Salinas blamed coal burning pollution from Asia and noted that most of the coal mined in Alaska would be shipped to Asia. In this way Alaskans would poison their own fishing industry.

Salinas has worked with Native Alaskans to stop these coal mines. She said Native people have told her that they feel coal functions as "the liver of the world" and it should be left in the ground. Coal as the "liver" of the world is not a bad metaphor. Coal is not just another mineral; it is biological. It is the remains of ancient life. The liver cleanses toxins from the body, and coal, if left in the ground, keeps our climate cool and our air and water clean.

While Alaskan coal is destined to be shipped to Asia, it looks like Appalachian and even Wyoming coal will increasingly be shipped to Europe. Recent reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post describe a spike in global coal consumption. With the falling dollar value, American coal is now a bargain for overseas buyers; however, that is in the context of an overall price rise that is unprecedented. Spot market coal prices have risen by 50 percent or more in recent months. Coal consumption worldwide has increased by 30 percent over the last six years.

American electricity consumers are used to hearing that coal is much cheaper than renewable alternatives like solar and wind, but that might not be true for long. Consumers haven't seen the impact of expensive coal yet because most utilities lock in coal supplies with long-term contracts. Electricity rates will begin to shoot upwards when those contracts expire in the years ahead.

There is no chance that prices will come back down again either, because Peak Coal, like Peak Oil, is fast approaching. Journalist David Strahan, in a January 17 article for New Scientist, has documented what's known about coal reserves. He concludes that the official figures, like the official figures for recoverable oil reserves, have been vastly inflated.

On March 18, Standard & Poor's released a study concluding that utilities and states with Renewable Portfolio Standards need to do a better job of revealing how expensive their mandates for renewable solar and wind power will be. By that same token, utilities should be required to reveal all of the current and future costs for dirty and increasingly expensive coal power.

Kelpie Wilson is Truthout's environment editor. Trained as a mechanical engineer, she embarked on a career as a forest protection activist, then returned to engineering as a technical writer for the solar power industry. She is the author of "Primal Tears," an eco-thriller about a hybrid human-bonobo girl. Greg Bear, author of "Darwin's Radio," says: "'Primal Tears' is primal storytelling, thoughtful and passionate. Kelpie Wilson wonderfully expands our definitions of human and family. Read Leslie Thatcher's review of Kelpie Wilson's novel "Primal Tears."

Kansas House Rejects Minimum Wage Increase

The Kansas House today narrowly rejected a proposal that would have increased the Kansas minimum wage to $7.25 per hour.

The Kansas minimum wage of $2.65/hour is the lowest minimum wage in the nation and has not been increased since 1988. Rep. Stan Frownfelter, D-Kansas City offered an amendment during debate this morning on SB 461 to mirror the federal minimum wage raising the state wage to $7.25 by 2010.

With the Frownfelter Amendment, the state's minimum wage would increase to $5.85 per hour on September 1, 2008. The rate would then go up to $6.55 per hour on September 1, 2009 and to $7.25 on September 1, 2010.

Rather than vote directly on the bill, Rep. Mike O'Neal of Hutchinson made a motion to send the bill back to committee. The O'Neal motion to rerefer SB 461 to the House Committee on Commerce & Labor passed on a vote of 63-58.

Those voting to send the measure back to committee, avoiding an increase in the state minimum wage:

Clay Aurand - R
Virginia Beamer - R
Bob Bethell - R
Elaine Bowers - R
Anthony Brown - R
Steve Brunk - R
Richard Carlson - R
Jeff Colyer - R
Barbara Craft - R
David Crum - R
Don Dahl - R
John Faber - R
Pat George - R
Mario Goico - R
Lana Gordon - R
John Grange - R
Gary Hayzlett - R
Ben Hodge - R
Carl Holmes - R
Mitch Holmes - R
Steve Huebert - R
Joe Humerickhouse - R
Terrie Huntington - R
Dan Johnson - R
Kasha Kelley - R
Dick Kelsey - R
Mike Kiegerl - R
Jeff King - R
Lance Kinzer - R
Forest Knox - R
Brenda Landwehr - R
Peggy Mast - R
Ty Masterson - R
Joe McLeland - R
Ray Merrick - R
Ronnie Metsker - R
Jim Morrison - R
Judy Morrison - R
Tom Moxley - R
Don Myers - R
Mike O'Neal - R
Rob Olson - R
Joe Patton - R
Virgil Peck - R
Larry Powell - R
Richard Proehl - R
Jill Quigley - R
Marc Rhoades - R
Charlie Roth - R
Don Schroeder - R
Sharon Schwartz - R
Arlen Siegfreid - R
Sheryl Spalding - R
Vern Swanson - R
Lee Tafanelli - R
Jene Vickrey - R
Jason Watkins - R
Jeff Whitham - R
Kenny Wilk - R
Bill Wolf - R
Kay Wolf - R
Ron Worley - R
Kevin Yoder - R

Last session, an amendment by Rep. Valdenia Winn (D-Kansas City) to raise the state minimum wage to the federal minimum wage and to empower the Secretary of Labor to raise it further to match future federal rate increases was rejected on a vote of 56-63. A attempt to repeal the minimum wage altogether was fended off on a similar 56-62 vote.

Five Years Into War, Soldiers Speak

By Maya Schenwar
Original available at t r u t h o u t | Report
Wednesday 19 March 2008

Washington - Today marks the fifth anniversary of the day President Bush announced from the Oval Office the "opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign" to invade Iraq. On that day, he invested the military with a great and grave responsibility.

"To all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you," Bush said. "That trust is well placed."

Five years later, more than 200 of those men and women joined last week in Silver Spring, Maryland, to reject that trust, to speak out against that mission and to invest their government with the responsibility to end it. During the Winter Soldier testimonies, they told their own stories of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the realities of life on the ground, not of the Oval Office. They told of the killing of civilians, the destruction of houses and farms, the mishandling of war dead, the use of illegal weapons, the dehumanization of the "enemy" and the pain that war has etched onto their own lives.

Over the course of four days, from March 13 to 16, they testified against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They found them guilty.

"We were not bad people," testified Cliff Hicks, a 23-year-old Iraq veteran, expressing the sentiment of many of his peers, who spoke of wrestling with guilt, shame and fear. "We were all good people in a bad situation, and we did what we had to do to get through."

The event was in some ways a revival of the first Winter Soldier, in 1971, in which more than a hundred Vietnam veterans gathered to mourn their own acts of violence and speak out against the war that perpetuated them.

Last week's Winter Soldier comprised the largest-ever gathering of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Like the Vietnam-era veterans, their aim is larger than the sum of their personal testimonies. They hope to play an integral role in ending the occupation, according to Kelly Dougherty, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), the organization behind the event.

"Though we may get down at times, we should be proud that we're standing up and moving forward," Dougherty said, introducing Winter Soldier's first panel. "As we enter the sixth year of this occupation, the voices of veterans and service members, as well as civilians on the ground, need to be heard by the American people, and by the people of the world, and by other veterans so they can find their voice to tell their story."

The winter soldiers' testimonies spanned a broad range. Some confronted the killing of civilians and other actual violations of the Geneva conventions, while others detailed incidents that are often overlooked, like racism toward Iraqis, gender discrimination within the military and the waste and destruction of environmental resources.

The panels of testifying veterans were often backed up by slides and video: a screaming mother watching her house being ransacked, a mosque minaret shattering under repeated gunfire from soldiers "tak[ing] out aggression," a bomb hitting a government building - their firsthand, uncensored footage of life at war.

Speaking from the Oval Office on that March day five years ago, Bush predicted a clearly defined, broadly honorable relationship with Iraqis.

"The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery," Bush said. "The people you liberate will witness the honorable and decent spirit of the American military. I want Americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm."

Winter Soldier aimed to break down that fiction of do-no-evil military nobility, according to Perry O'Brien, one of its lead organizers, who served as an Army medic in Afghanistan.

The problem, O'Brien told Truthout, is the "mythology of the bad apple as war criminal, instead of the war itself as criminal." After incidents like those in Haditha, Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, Americans generally assumed they were caused by individual "bad soldiers."

"The average soldier on the ground understands that this is much more widespread," O'Brien said. "It's the reality of occupation."

Aaron Hughes, an Iraq veteran who initiated the Winter Soldier effort, adds "democracy" - a key part of Bush's stated mission in Iraq - to "honor" and "decency" on the list of amorphous concepts that eschew the brutal reality of life on the ground.

"When the military's talking about the heroic nature it embodies, we want to make sure that people know that what the military's for is to kill people," Hughes told Truthout. "You don't learn about democracy in basic training, you learn how to kill people."

Those kinds of "lessons" can take a toll on one's health. In addition to disclosing civilian killings and shattered villages, Winter Soldier revealed the internal battle soldiers continue to fight after returning home. A panel focused on the "crisis in veterans' health care" showed a large-scale deficiency in the Department of Veterans' Affairs' (VA's) treatment and diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Accordingly, the conference offered resources for vets' psychological needs: Mental health professionals were available on site, along with massage therapists, acupuncture, yoga and information about how to make the most of the VA's resources.

But one of the most important modes of psychological healing available at Winter Soldier, according to O'Brien, was the simple presence of the other testifiers. Before and after their testimony, veterans pre-briefed and debriefed for at least an hour, working through the emotions tangled up inside their stories. Over the course of the four days, vets worked to solidify their bond with each other - a key tool for both psychological support and political action.

"We're a community, a family," O'Brien said. "The camaraderie, the brotherhood and sisterhood that we felt when we were serving certainly carried over into our activism. There's a sense of shared experience around that community that's really powerful and has helped us have the courage to come forward and tell our stories."

The winter soldiers' voices, organizers hope, will continue to echo in the weeks, months and years beyond last weekend in Silver Spring. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who attended the conference on Friday, plans to enter their testimony into the Congressional Record.

The Wages of Peace

By Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier
The Nation, 31 March 2008 Issue
To view original click here.

There is no longer any doubt that the Iraq War is a moral and strategic disaster for the United States. But what has not yet been fully recognized is that it has also been an economic disaster. To date, the government has spent more than $522 billion on the war, with another $70 billion already allocated for 2008.

With just the amount of the Iraq budget of 2007, $138 billion, the government could instead have provided Medicaid-level health insurance for all 45 million Americans who are uninsured. What's more, we could have added 30,000 elementary and secondary schoolteachers and built 400 schools in which they could teach. And we could have provided basic home weatherization for about 1.6 million existing homes, reducing energy consumption in these homes by 30 percent.

But the economic consequences of Iraq run even deeper than the squandered opportunities for vital public investments. Spending on Iraq is also a job killer. Every $1 billion spent on a combination of education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure investments creates between 50 and 100 percent more jobs than the same money going to Iraq. Taking the 2007 Iraq budget of $138 billion, this means that upward of 1 million jobs were lost because the Bush Administration chose the Iraq sinkhole over public investment.

Recognizing these costs of the Iraq War is even more crucial now that the economy is facing recession. While a recession is probably unavoidable, its length and severity will depend on the effectiveness of the government's stimulus initiatives. By a wide margin, the most effective stimulus is to expand public investment projects, especially at the state and local levels. The least effective fiscal stimulus is the one crafted by the Bush Administration and Congress-mostly to just send out rebate checks to all taxpayers. This is because a high proportion of the new spending encouraged by the rebates will purchase imports rather than financing new jobs in the United States, whereas public investment would concentrate job expansion within the country. Combining this Bush stimulus initiative with the ongoing spending on Iraq will only deepen the severity of the recession.

Is Militarism Necessary for Prosperity?

The government spent an estimated $572 billion on the military in 2007. This amounts to about $1,800 for every resident of the country. That's more than the combined GDPs of Sweden and Thailand, and eight times federal spending on education.

The level of military spending has risen dramatically since 2001, with the increases beginning even before 9/11. As a share of GDP, the military budget rose from 3 percent to 4.4 percent during the first seven years of the Bush presidency. At the current size of the economy, a difference between a military budget at 4.4 rather than 3 percent of GDP amounts to $134 billion.

The largest increases in the military budget during the Bush presidency have been associated with the Iraq War. Indeed, the $138 billion spent on Iraq in 2007 was basically equal to the total increase in military spending that caused the military budget to rise to 4.4 percent of GDP. It is often argued that the military budget is a cornerstone of the economy-that the Pentagon is a major underwriter of important technical innovations as well as a source of millions of decent jobs. At one level these claims are true. When the government spends upward of $600 billion per year of taxpayers' money on anything, it cannot help but generate millions of jobs. Similarly, when it spends a large share of that budget on maintaining and strengthening the most powerful military force in the history of the world, this cannot fail to encourage technical innovations that are somehow connected to the instruments of warfare.

Yet it is also true that channeling hundreds of billions of dollars into areas such as renewable energy and mass transportation would create a hothouse environment supporting new technologies. For example, utilities in Arizona and Nevada are developing plans to build "concentrated" solar power plants, which use the sun to heat a liquid that can drive a turbine. It is estimated that this technology, operating on a large scale, could drive down the costs of solar electricity dramatically, from its current level of about $4 per watt to between $2.50 and $3 per watt in the sunniest regions of the country. At these prices, solar electricity becomes much cheaper than oil-driven power and within range of coal. These and related technologies could advance much more rapidly toward cost competitiveness with coal, oil and nuclear power if they were to receive even a fraction of the subsidies that now support weapons development (as well as the oil industry).

Swords, Plowshares and Jobs

How does it happen that government spending devoted to healthcare, education, environmental sustainability and infrastructure can generate up to twice as many jobs per dollar as spending on militarism?

Three factors play a role in determining the overall job effects of any target of government spending. Let's compare the construction of Camp Victory, the main US military base on the western outskirts of Baghdad, with weatherizing existing homes in New England to increase their energy efficiency. The first factor to consider is the jobs that get created directly by each project. The second is the job creation in the industries that supply products for building the camp or weatherizing the homes. These would include the steel, concrete, weapons and telecommunications industries for building Camp Victory; and lumber, insulation and trucking industries for home weatherization. Finally, new jobs will result when people who are paid to build Camp Victory or weatherize a house spend the money they have earned-a weapons engineer at Camp Victory buying a lawnmower during his vacation leave at home or a construction worker in New England buying a new car.

How does one spending target create more jobs for a given amount of dollars spent? Still considering Camp Victory construction versus New England home weatherization, there are, again, three factors:

1. More jobs but lower-paying jobs. Average pay is lower in the construction industry working on home weatherization in New England than in mounting weapons installations at Camp Victory. So a given pool of money is divided among more employed people.
2. More spending on people, less on machines and supplies. In weatherizing a home, the machinery and supplies costs are relatively low, while the need for construction workers is high. Building a high-tech military base in Baghdad entails enormous investments in steel and sophisticated electronic equipment and relatively less spending for people on the job.
3. More money stays within the US economy. We roughly estimate that US military personnel spend only 43 percent of their income on domestic goods and services, while the overall population spends an average of 83 percent of their income on domestic products and 17 percent on imports.

It is important to know which of these three factors is relatively more important in generating the overall increase in jobs. In particular, it would not necessarily be a favorable development if the overall increase in employment opportunities is mainly just a byproduct of creating lots of low-paying jobs.

In fact, if we were simply to send a rebate to taxpayers for the full amount of the Iraq War budget-i.e., a measure similar to Bush's current stimulus plan-the increased spending on personal consumption would produce lots of what are now bad jobs, in areas such as retail, hotels, restaurants and personal services. Because of this, a transfer of funds from the military to tax rebates and personal consumption increases would produce a 25 percent increase in employment but an 11 percent decline in overall wages and benefits paid to working people.

The opposite is true with education as the spending target. Here, both the total number of jobs created and the average pay are higher than with the military. It's less clear-cut when it comes to healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure investments. More jobs will be created than with military spending, and the total amount of wages and benefits going to workers will also be significantly higher than with military spending. But the average pay for a healthcare worker or those engaged in mass transit or construction is lower than in the military.

Is it better for overall economic welfare to generate more jobs, even if average wages and benefits are lower? There isn't a single correct answer to this question. It depends on the size of these differences: how many low-paying jobs are being generated, and how bad are these jobs? How many high-quality jobs would be sacrificed through a transition out of the military, where the average pay is relatively high? Indeed, by completely shutting off Iraq War-related spending and transferring the money in equal shares to education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure, average salaries would decline. However, the majority of new jobs created by these peaceful alternatives would command salaries above a reasonable living-wage standard of $16 an hour.

Pushing Unemployment Down

As of January there were 7.6 million people unemployed in a labor force of 154 million, producing an official unemployment rate of 4.9 percent. This was a significant increase over the 4.5 percent unemployment rate in mid-2007, and thus one important sign of a weakening economy. Unemployment is likely to keep rising as the economic slowdown continues.

In our current context, what would be the overall job effects of transferring the entire 2007 Iraq War budget of $138 billion into healthcare, education, energy conservation and infrastructure investments? If we assume that all else would remain equal in the labor market, a net increase (i.e., the total expansion of jobs in public investments minus the reduction in military jobs) in the range of 1 million jobs would therefore reduce the total number of unemployed people to around 6.6 million. The unemployment rate would fall to about 4.3 percent.

This is still an unacceptably high unemployment rate. But if the public-investment-directed spending shift out of Iraq were combined with a stimulus package of roughly the same size as the Iraq War budget-i.e., in the range of the Bush Administration's $150 billion stimulus-the overall impact would be a strong program to fight recession and create decent jobs.

In particular, through this combination of a spending shift out of Iraq and a stimulus program focused on public investment, there is a good chance that unemployment would fall below 4 percent. When unemployment fell below 4 percent in the late 1960s and late 1990s, the high demand for workers led to rising wages and benefits, in particular at the low end of the job market. Poverty fell as a result. Near full employment in the late '60s also brought better working conditions and less job discrimination against minorities.

Of course, we cannot assume that everything about the labor market would stay unchanged after a huge job expansion in healthcare, education, energy conservation and infrastructure investments, while jobs connected with the military contracted. There would no doubt be skill shortages in some areas and labor gluts in others. There would also probably be an increase in inflation that would have to be managed carefully.

These concerns are real. But it is still true that large-scale job creation within the United States is possible as an outgrowth of ending the Iraq War, reallocating the entire Iraq budget to important domestic public investment projects and fighting the recession with further increases in public investments.

What if the Iraq War budget is transferred only partially to domestic public investments? Let's assume, optimistically, that a new Administration takes serious initiatives to end the Iraq War immediately after coming into office next January. This new Administration would almost certainly not have the wherewithal to shut down operations within one year. And even if it could completely end the war within a year, the government should still commit significant funds to war reparations for the Iraqi people.

The job expansion within the United States will decline to the extent that spending of any sort continues in Iraq rather than being transferred into domestic public investments. But even if the net transfer of funds is, say, $100 billion rather than $138 billion, several hundred thousand new domestic jobs would still be created. There is also no reason that the domestic public investment expansion has to mirror the decrease in the Iraq War budget. Any stimulus program initiated over the next few months-either a Bush-style program or one focused on public investment-would entail spending beyond the current Iraq budget levels.

Public Investment and Recession

There's also a strong argument for a stimulus program that emphasizes public investment at the state and local level. State and local government revenues-which primarily finance education, healthcare, public safety and infrastructure-are always badly hit by economic downturns and will be especially strapped as a result of the current recession. State and local government revenues decline when the incomes and property values of their residents fall. Property tax revenues will fall especially sharply as a result of the collapse of housing prices. Moreover, state and local governments, unlike the federal government, cannot run deficits and are forced to maintain balanced budgets, even in a recession. This means that unless the federal government injects new revenue into the state and local budgets, spending on public investments will decline.

Deficit Reduction: The Responsible Alternative?

The federal fiscal deficit in 2007 was $244 billion. Shutting down the Iraq War and using the fiscal savings to cut the deficit would mean a 57 percent deficit reduction.

Is this the best use of the funds released by the Iraq War? Of course, the government cannot run a reckless fiscal policy, no matter how pressing the country's social and environmental needs. But a $244 billion deficit in today's economy is not reckless. It amounts to about 1.8 percent of GDP. This is slightly below the average-sized deficit between 1960 and 2006 of 1.9 percent of GDP. The largest deviation from this long-term average occurred under Ronald Reagan's presidency, when the deficit averaged 4.2 percent of GDP-i.e., more than twice as large as the current deficit as a share of the economy.

The recession and stimulus program will of course produce a large increase in the deficit. Recessions are not the time to focus on deficit reduction. But even if we allowed the deficit to double from its 2007 level-to about $500 billion-its size, as a share of GDP, would still be below the average figure for the entire Reagan presidency, including both the boom and recession years.

We would certainly need to worry about the deficit today, and even more after the recession ends, if it were persistently running at Reagan-era levels. This is because the government would soon be consuming upward of 20 percent of the total federal budget in interest payments, as it did at the end of the Reagan era. This is opposed to the 10 percent of total government spending we now pay to the Japanese and Chinese bondholders, US banks and wealthy private citizens who own the bulk of US government debt. But because the deficit has been at a reasonable level coming into the recession, the primary problem with the Treasury's fiscal stance is not the size of the deficit per se but how the money is being spent-that we are using the money for Iraq and a private consumption-led stimulus rather than public investment.

There are many good reasons government policy should now initiate major commitments to investment in the areas of healthcare, education, environmental sustainability and infrastructure. All these spending areas stand on their own merits. But moving the $138 billion spent on the Iraq War in 2007 into public investments will also increase employment, adding up to 1 million jobs. On top of this, expanding public investment spending is the single most effective tool for fighting the recession.

A great deal is at stake here. The Iraq War has been about death and destruction. Ending the war could be a first serious step toward advancing a viable program for jobs, healthcare, education and a clean-energy economy.

Glaciers Suffer Record Shrinkage

BBC News
Sunday 16 March 2008

The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United Nations Environment Programme has shown.

Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006.

Some of the biggest losses have occurred in the Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges in Europe.

Experts have called for "immediate action" to reverse the trend, which is seen as a key climate change indicator.

Estimates for 2006 indicate shrinkage of 1.4 metres of 'water equivalent' compared to half a metre in 2005.

Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary General of the UN and executive director of its environment programme (UNEP), said: "Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry and power generation during key parts of the year.

"There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine. The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes notice.

Litmus Test

He said that action was already being taken and pointed out that the elements of a green economy were emerging from the more the money invested in renewable energies.

Mr Steiner went on: "The litmus test will come in late 2009 at the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen.

"Here governments must agree on a decisive new emissions reduction and adaptation-focused regime. Otherwise, and like the glaciers, our room for maneuver and the opportunity to act may simply melt away."

Dr Ian Willis, of the Scott Polar Research Institute, said: "It is not too late to stop the shrinkage of these ice sheets but we need to take action immediately."

The findings were compiled by the World Glacier Monitoring Service which is supported by UNEP. Thickening and thinning is calculated in terms of 'water equivalent'.

Glaciers across nine mountain ranges were analysed.

Dr. Wilfried Haeberli, director of the service, said: "The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight.

"This continues the trend in accelerated ice loss during the past two and a half decades and brings the total loss since 1980 to more than 10.5 metres of water equivalent."

During 1980-1999, average loss rates had been 0.3 metres per year. Since the turn of the millennium, this rate had increased to about half a metre per year.

The record annual loss during these two decades - 0.7 metres in 1998 - has now been exceeded by three out of the past six year (2003, 2004 and 2006).

On average, one metre water equivalent corresponds to 1.1 metres in ice thickness. That suggests a further shrinking in 2006 of 1.5 actual metres and since 1980 a total reduction in thickness of ice of just over 11.5 metres or almost 38 feet.

In its entirety, the research includes figures from around 100 glaciers, with data showing significant shrinkage taking place in European countries including Austria, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.

Norway's Breidalblikkbrea glacier thinned by almost 3.1 metres in one of the largest reductions.

Secretary Bremby's testimony before Congress

Written Testimony of Roderick L. Bremby

Secretary, Kansas Department of Health and Environment

House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming

Hearing on “Massachusetts v. U.S. EPA Part II: Implications of the Supreme Court Decision”

Salina Journal On-Line - March 14th, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I am Roderick L. Bremby, Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. I appreciate the opportunity to testify on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, No. 05-1120, slip op. (U.S., April 2, 2007), and how the decision related to my denial of the Sunflower Electric Power Corporation’s (Sunflower Electric) permit for the addition of two 700-megawatt coal-fired generators. I will also address the legal and policy implications of EPA’s failure to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

This responsibility is exercised through the regulation of health and environmental entities in Kansas including childcare centers, food service businesses, hospitals, laboratories, feedlots, landfills, power plants, and various other industries with environmental impacts. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment also manages programs dedicated to providing disease surveillance and prevention efforts, bioterrorism planning, local and rural health assistance, health care and environmental protection information, and statewide health promotional campaigns.

In keeping with the agency mission and to secure its vision of “healthy Kansans living in safe and sustainable environments,” in October 2007 I made the decision to deny the permit request of Sunflower Electric, which if granted, would have allowed the emission of an estimated 11 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually.

Basis for the Sunflower Electric Permit Decision.

The Massachusetts v. EPA decision was highly influential in the State of Kansas’ decision to deny the petition of Sunflower Electric to construct a coal-fired power plant. The Supreme Court’s finding that greenhouse gases are an air pollutant within the meaning of the federal Clean Air Act supports and confirms my own determination that CO2 constitutes air pollution within the meaning of the Kansas Air Quality Act.

Under the Kansas Air Quality Act, the Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has broad authority to protect the health of Kansas citizens and the environment. The process for obtaining an air quality permit includes a technical review of a permit application as well as a comment period to solicit input on the proposed permit from the public. Upon consideration of the permit record as a whole and pursuant to the legal authority of K.S.A. 65-3008a(b) and K.S.A. 65-3012, the decision was made to deny the permit. The former statute provides that a decision on an air quality permit may be affirmed, modified or reversed after the public hearing. The latter statute allows the Secretary to take such action as necessary to protect the health of persons or the environment, notwithstanding a permit applicant’s compliance with all other existing provisions of the Kansas Air Quality Act. Action under K.S.A. 65-3012 requires information that the emission of air pollution presents a substantial endangerment to the health of persons or to the environment. Endangerment may be a threatened or potential harm as well as an actual harm.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA was a key consideration in making the Sunflower Electric decision. The Court’s recognition of the significant national and international information available on the deleterious impact of greenhouse gases on the environment, and its conclusion that the greenhouse gas, CO2, meets the broad definition of air pollutant under the Clean Air Act provided support for the position I took that CO2 also meets the similarly broad definition of air pollution under the Kansas Air Quality Act. The Court’s decision, the Kansas Attorney General Opinion supporting my interpretation of K.S.A. 65-3012, the reports of the International Panel on Climate Change, and the extensive administrative record - including comments submitted at the public hearings held in regard to the Sunflower Electric permit application - all contributed to my conclusion that the CO2 emissions from the proposed Sunflower Electric expansion would constitute a substantial endangerment to the citizens of Kansas and our environment.

Effect of EPA’s Failure to Regulate Greenhouse Gases.

EPA’s failure to determine one way or the other whether greenhouse gases “cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare” has impacted the State of Kansas’ ability to enforce and maintain the authority stemming from state law to protect the public health and environment from actual, threatened or potential harm from air pollution.

Unless and until EPA acts, its failure to regulate greenhouse gases has significantly - and adversely - affected Kansans. The Kansas Legislature has recently passed a bill that will serve to tether greenhouse gas emission control in our state directly to what EPA will do … or fail to do. The “Sunflower Electric bill” (House Substitute for S.B. 327) provides that I, as Secretary of KDHE, may not promulgate any rule or regulation, or issue any order or take any other action under any provision of the Kansas Air Quality Act that is more “stringent, restrictive, or expansive” than required by the CAA or any rule or regulation adopted thereunder by EPA. Governor Sebelius has expressed her intention to veto the Sunflower Electric bill, which passed with votes insufficient for an override, but that may change. .

Until EPA takes action on regulating greenhouse gases, we in Kansas will be limited in our ability to aggressively address CO2 emissions. Given the unambiguous requirement in the CAA that CO2 emissions be regulated and reduced, it would make sense from both a human health and business perspective for EPA to issue its regulations as quickly as possible. .

Impact of EPA Decision to Regulate GHG Emissions on Kansas Dispute.

EPA’s issuance of an endangerment finding or notice of any intent to promulgate federal regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources would further support my decision to regulate CO2 emissions in Kansas, which was appealed to the Kansas Court of Appeals, the District Court of Finney County, Kansas, and the Office of Administrative Hearings of the State of Kansas. The Kansas Supreme Court has taken up the appeals filed in the Court of Appeals on its own motion, and the proceedings in the district court and office of administrative appeals are stayed, pending disposition of the appeals by the Supreme Court.

In denying Sunflower Electric’s permit application, I found that its proposal to construct two new coal-fired power plant units poses a substantial endangerment to Kansans and our environment. That finding is well supported by the extensive administrative record, and I stand by it. EPA’s issuance of an endangerment finding would support my determination, but is not necessary for it. Similarly, my authority to take action in regard to greenhouse gas emissions - and therefore deny Sunflower Electric’s permit application - was based on the Kansas Air Quality Act. Therefore, EPA’s notice of intent to regulate would support my exercising the authority granted to me by Kansas law, but is not necessary to it. However, EPA’s decision to regulate GHG emissions would be critical to alleviating the so-called “regulatory uncertainty” and thus economic uncertainty I have been alleged to have created by denying the Sunflower Electric permit.

Conclusion.

The most critical challenge facing the states is policy uncertainty at the federal level. In the absence of federal legislation or regulation in this area and with the potential for enactment of the legislation currently pending in Kansas, it would be impossible for Kansas to protect the health of its citizens and the environment from the effects of CO2.

Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony. I look forward to your questions.

Roderick L. Bremby Secretary, Kansas Department of Health and Environment Topeka, Kansas Prior to his January 2003 appointment by Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary Bremby served as a research assistant professor at the University of Kansas and as associate director of the Work Group on Health Promotion and Community Development. His work involved providing technical assistance, evaluation support and community research for community health initiatives. Secretary Bremby has been a consultant for a variety of organizations including, community coalitions, advocacy organizations, local government agencies, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (Strengthening Democracy in Uganda).

Secretary Bremby served 10 years as the assistant city manager in Lawrence, KS, where he was responsible for overseeing the budgeting process, police, fire and medical, public works, water, sewer, finance, information systems, and parks and recreation departments. Secretary Bremby holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Kansas, where he completed an undergraduate degree in psychology and communication studies. He also completed postgraduate study at the Brookings Institution, The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and an executive development course at The Center for Creative Leadership. Secretary Bremby is a Kansas Health Foundation Fellow and a graduate of Leadership Forth Worth, Leadership Lawrence, and Leadership Kansas.

The Monstrous Monsanto Universe

By Dominique Dhombres
Le Monde, Wednesday 12 March 2008

To view original click here.

The charge sheet is horrifying, inexorable and convincing. The multinational firm Monsanto, which sells 90 percent of genetically modified organisms (GMO), massively lies to many people and even the whole planet with great success - the power that money and the - apparently unlimited - support of the United States government bestows. You already know all that if you watched Marie-Monique Robin's extraordinary documentary, "Le Monde selon Monsanto" ["The World According to Monsanto"], March 11 on the Arte channel.

The case is conducted as a personal investigation, and the director has herself filmed as she plays her computer keys to research, most often through Google, the information accessible to everyone, as long as one is willing to try to separate the wheat from the chaff in the mass of available documents. And there's an abundance of chaff, given how the company has proliferated effective advertising (intended for farmers in every country and in every language) and dubious scientific studies over the years. "On its Internet site, Monsanto presents itself as an agricultural company the mission of which is to help small farmers produce healthier food, while reducing agriculture's impact on the environment," the director explains. Neither assertion is true. Some of these foodstuffs are dangerous and their effect on nature is catastrophic in the long term. Founded in 1901 in Saint Louis (Missouri), the firm is a dangerous recidivist. It began as an industrial company manufacturing chemical products.

It has, notably, concocted impressive quantities of dioxin, the hyper-concentrated poison contained in the Agent Orange American airplanes dispersed over forests to destroy vegetation during the Vietnam War. Its consequences are still being felt today, with the births of deformed children and after-effects on a goodly number of American war veterans exposed to this frightening product. Is that nightmare in the process of resuming under a new form right under our eyes? There's this hormone injected into milk cows to increase their yield that invariably transforms them into Frankenstein animals.

We are now very familiar with - because José Bové has so often "prematurely" reaped it - the surprising corn that yields a bigger ear than the others. At the moment, no one knows whether it also has death-dealing properties. But we are certain that it is in the process of eliminating, little by little, all other corn species, even from the plant's original birthplace, Mexico.

Obviously, we should have liked to have Monsanto's response to these accusations. The firm declined that offer. That's too bad.

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Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.

SUVs Without Wheels

by Stan Cox
Published on Thursday, March 13, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

To view original click here.

The financial industry is suffering convulsions because it gave too many people too big an answer to the question, “How much house can I afford?” But in looking over the mess left by the popped housing bubble, another question comes to mind, one of much greater consequence in the long run: “How much house can the planet afford?”

Since 1990, construction of supersized homes of 3,000 square feet or more has doubled, to 24 percent of new homes. Combine that with the shrinking size of the American family, and the result is that average floor space per person has grown by three times since 1950.

As the heavy-breathing real estate market reached its zenith, square-footage mania spread from the suburbs into cities, mutating into a doubly wasteful disease: teardown fever. Normal-sized, sound, comfortable houses were demolished to free up urban lots for the biggest, flashiest structures that could be squeezed in.

For homebuyers with more money than time, the big bust is no problem. The Wall Street Journal reports that luxury-home builders in places like Greenwich, Conn., and Aspen, Colo., are hiring armies of construction workers to complete 10,000-square-foot projects in about half the typical time.

Whether they’re targeting the tastelessness of mass-produced McMansions bulked up on low-interest steroids or the ostentation of real mansions in enclaves of the rich, critics of the oversized-house trend usually focus on aesthetics. Monumental bad taste is indeed fascinating. But far more serious is the lasting environmental damage these incredible hulks do.

The manufacture and transportation of concrete to build a typical 3,000-square-foot house generate greenhouse gases amounting to 47 tons of carbon dioxide. And laid end to end, the pieces of lumber to make that house would stretch for more than four miles.

Wood, unlike concrete, gets some credit for being a “renewable” resource. The lumber and construction industries point out that they are taking greenhouse carbon out of the atmosphere and locking it into wood-frame houses. But that ignores the ecological effect of wrecking complex forest ecosystems to feed industrial wood production.

And in addition to requiring greater quantities of wood, concrete, plastics and copper, large houses have more volume to heat and cool, and more room for appliances and gadgets. Over a 50-year lifetime, a standard house pumps out greenhouse emissions amounting to 30 to 40 times the weight of the carbon that’s socked away in its frame.

The bigger the house, the bigger the emissions. Based on University of Michigan figures, a typical 3,000-square-footer will emit as much carbon dioxide as would three — count ‘em, three — 16-miles-per-gallon SUVs driven the national vehicle average of 12,000 miles per year over 50 years.

Energy consumption is being addressed in a limited way by eco-friendly construction. But a 2005 analysis in the Journal of Industrial Ecology concluded that a 3,000-square-foot, super-efficient house consumes 50 percent more energy than does a 1,500-square-foot house built only to mediocre energy standards.

Building new, resource-tight houses without curbing their size could make matters worse. Taking monthly energy savings into account, buyers will see that they can afford a bigger mortgage payment — and more square footage — with an efficient house.

The long-term effect of titanic houses parallels that of SUVs and pickup trucks. Sales of the biggest and least efficient vehicles might be ebbing, but those that have accumulated over the past decade will be out there by the millions, belching pollutants, for years to come.

And American families will be living in, heating, cooling and powering their current fleet of SUVs without wheels not for years, but for decades.

The economy will eventually shake off its post-bubble hangover and move on to new crises. The bigger challenge will be cutting carbon emissions deeply enough to avert catastrophic climate change. To meet that goal, one thing we will have to do is yank excessive square footage out from the tangle of current housing problems and declare it a luxury whose ecological costs we can no longer afford.

Stan Cox is a plant breeder at the Land Institute in Salina, Kan., and author of “Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine,” a book to be released later this month. He wrote this essay for the institute’s Prairie Writers Circle. Reach him at t.stan@cox.net.