December 2008
19 posts
8 tags
12 tags
On the ground at the TVA spill
Dave Cooper details some of his experiences on the ground in the wake of the massive Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash spill.
It’s hard to comprehend the enormous size of this spill. TVA’s coal ash mountain was stacked over 50 feet high — as high as a 5 story building.
If a dump truck can hold 20 cubic yards of dirt and ash, it will take 265,000 truck loads to haul away all...
9 tags
6 tags
Instructive →
If anyone wants to view an instructive dialogue (in which Dan has taken significant part) illustrating how to deconstruct and challenge species-ist bias, head on over to this EcoSalon post and check out the comments section.
Update: Now Matt (with Matt M. as his username) has taken a moment to chime in. Head on over.
5 tags
"Less than human"
Brent Staples, in The New York Times:
Black American lives were viewed as expendable in the pre-civil rights South. The murderers who hanged, dismembered or burned black victims alive — before crowds of cheering onlookers — knew well that the law would not act against them. These savage rituals were meant to keep the black community on its knees.
The white men and women who flocked to these...
14 tags
The Whale Warriors: Excerpt 1
The leaden sky closed in around us again; the wind died; we cruised west. Flurries of snow came and went, as did pairs of storm petrels, the small black birds with the white rumps. I went to the green room in the afternoon, and Allison put on a video made by Mark Votier. He was the one who had been hired in 1996 by the Institute of Cetacean Research [Japan’s official whale-slaughtering body...
7 tags
Paul Weyrich dies
Paul Weyrich was the founder of the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing institution dedicated to advancing “liberty” — for individuals and corporations who wish to pollute, destroy, and usurp the commons for their own gain, and do it all behind closed doors.
According to Weyrich’s comrade-in-arms Grover Norquist:
Paul Weyrich created institutions and networks that...
15 tags
11 tags
Report confirms politicization of Bush Admin's...
The Department of the Interior’s Inspector General (IG) has released a report detailing the politicization of Endangered Species Act decisions at the departments that oversee management of public lands and wilderness. The full report has been posted by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.
The main target of the report, Julie MacDonald, has been hit previously by the IG for improperly leaking...
7 tags
Kristof the Coward
In an essay appearing in today’s Times, Nicholas Kristof proves he’s still a coward:
As Barack Obama ponders whom to pick as agriculture secretary, he should reframe the question. What he needs is actually a bold reformer in a position renamed “secretary of food.”
A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, fewer...
3 tags
x3+
Every animal welfare advocate has encountered flesh-eating zombies who, when confronted, make a number of wildly unfounded claims about non-human animals in attempts to justify evil acts. For example, there is this common rejoinder in discussions of animal welfare in zoos and circuses: “Animals live longer, happier lives out of the wild.”
Not so, apparently:
Lifespan of African...
5 tags
In The New York Times, Lou Ureneck, head of the Journalism Dept at Boston University, brings readers up to speed on his progress toward building a second home — a small cabin in the woods of Maine. In the essay, Ureneck presents this project as a material representation of the fantasy we all have to escape the oppressions of our daily lives:
Building a cabin, I’m finding, can be a lever...
5 tags
Pure masturbation
Professor Dacher Keltner’s essay in the 12/5/08 issue of The New York Times Magazine defends teasing as a useful and positive social tool, and I don’t take issue with the main thrust of the piece.
But I do take issue with the familiar, fallacious, and underhanded (whether conscious or not) tactic of aligning the position one wishes to promote with warm and fuzzy ideas about...
4 tags
10 tags
A tax on livestock emissions? →
An EPA proposal to tax some polluters has the agribusiness community up in arms. Although the report doesn’t even target the mega-polluting livestock industry — a par for the course omission — its members are afraid of an extension of the basic principle.
“This is one of the most ridiculous things the federal government has tried to do,” said Alabama Agriculture...
3 tags
Freedom! Or not.
From the November 2008 Jobs Report, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor:
Net job loss in November: 673,000
People who stopped looking for work in November: 637,000
Net reduction in payrolls over the past 6 months: 1,550,000
What ought to be a liberation for these folks is in fact a tightening of the noose. The organization of incentives within a humanist-capitalist society...
9 tags
Roger Ebert delivers a smackdown on Ben Stein and...
Just beautiful.
8 tags
Meat: the largest, most ignored cause of global... →
The New York Times is giving this fact a bit of attention, however.
The trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United Nations estimates, more even than from cars, buses and airplanes.
But unlike other industries, like cement making and power, which are facing enormous political and regulatory pressure...
6 tags
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends...”
– So said Upton Sinclair, according to Paul Krugman and Wikipedia.
As it turns out, all of our salaries — our livelihoods — within modern culture depend upon thievery. We buy and sell land, “commodities”, and, most abominably, other living creatures, without wondering what...