The internet is in an uproar about a bill called CISPA, but why? Here’s a simple primer on what this bill is and why it (and all its lookalikes) needs to be stopped.

Do you remember SOPA and PIPA? These two so-called internet security bills would, in the words of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), “hamper innovation, kill jobs, wreak havoc on Internet security, and undermine free speech.” We’re running low on outlets for true free speech in this world, so naturally, the interwebs were none too pleased.

In 2012, SOPA and PIPA provoked an internet-wide protest that saw some of the world’s most prominent websites go black, sporting only information pages about why the bills needed to be stopped. And it worked. SOPA and PIPA disappeared and we went about our business; but many knew the fight for our internet freedom and privacy wasn’t over. Turns out SOPA and PIPA were busy while on vacation, and now CISPA, a bill many are calling their “bastard offspring” is working its way through our government.

But what is this controversial bill, and why haven’t we seen the internet-wide blackout that SOPA and PIPA ignited?

Well, for one thing, America has had its fair share of distracting disasters in the last few weeks. But while we were mourning Boston, an even bigger threat to our rights was quietly passed by the House of Representatives. Although the Senate says it will shelve the bill in favor of drafting its own version, it’s imperative that Americans be informed about what’s at stake.

WHO

CISPA was introduced by U.S. Representative Michael Rogers (R-MI) back in 2011, but has received support from both sides of the aisle in the form of 111 co-sponsors. In an interesting twist, major web and tech entities such as Google, Mozilla, Wikipedia and Facebook, are not coming out in opposition of CISPA like they did with SOPA and PIPA. Some even support it. More about this later…

WHAT

CISPA stands for Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Sounds so nice doesn’t it? Who doesn’t love to share and be protected? If passed, CISPA would allow for voluntary information sharing between private companies and the government in the event of a cyber attack. If the government detects a cyber attack that might take down Facebook or Google, for example, they could notify those companies. At the same time, Facebook or Google could inform the feds if they notice unusual activity on their networks that might suggest a cyber attack (PG Mag).

WHY (Should You Care?)

Supporters of the bill say that it’s a necessary upgrade to the National Security Act of 1947, which does not cover cyber crimes. Politicians in the late 1940s couldn’t have possibly foreseen the pain of being hacked or becoming a victim of identity theft, so this part seems fairly benign as well. No one wants World World III to start because another country hacked into the military mainframe and fired off some missiles. While this is scary (but unlikely) it’s the other things the government and its corporate cronies could do with this power that’s truly terrifying.

Critics say that “CISPA is an affront to American civil liberties, and the privacy of its citizens.” According to the EFF, “the bill grants broad new powers, allowing companies to identify and obtain “threat information” by looking at your private information.” This would allow companies to easily hand over users’ private information to the government thanks to a liability clause (something that wasn’t included in SOPA/PIPA, and a main reason why big tech companies that opposed those bills now support CISPA. They have far less to lose). This, according to the EFF “essentially means CISPA would override the relevant provisions in all other laws—including privacy laws.”

With the recent passage of the NDAA, a measure that allows “indefinite detention of American citizens without due process at the discretion of the President,” the idea of who or what could be considered a “cyber threat” becomes much murkier. How many of us have shared criticism of our government or supported activists online? What happens if Facebook and Uncle Sam decide to create a handy list of online dissenters just in case? Your privacy and rights go out the window, that’s what.

And there’s also the reality that CISPA could not only enable–but possibly require–employees to provide their bosses with the passwords to their personal social media accounts. An amendment that would have prevented this was voted down by the House of Representatives. Lovely public servants, aren’t they?

WHEN

CISPA was passed in the House of Representatives on April 26, 2012, but was not passed by the U.S. Senate. President Obama’s advisers have argued that the bill lacks confidentiality and civil liberties safeguards and they advised him to veto it. In February 2013 the House reintroduced the bill and passed it on April 18, 2013.

THE GOOD NEWS

CISPA is dead for now and the White House still says it will veto any cyber security bill that doesn’t adequately protect civil liberties. But the same administration also passed the NDAA, so take that with a grain of salt.

Image: danitgeek/deviant art

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A collection of sayings from politicians and pundits on the role of corporations in government. 

It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. -Henry Ford

The real truth of the matter is, and you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. -Franklin Roosevelt

Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its powers, but the truth is the FED has usurped the government. It controls everything here (in Congress) and controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will… When the FED was passed, the people of the United States did not perceive that a world system was being set up here… A super-state controlled by international bankers, and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure! -Rep. Louis T. McFadden

The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. -Abraham Lincoln

The banks can and do create money… And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people. –Reginald McKenna

Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun. -Kurt Vonnegut

Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens. -Britney Spears (in 2003)

Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. -David Rockefeller

I knew that all corporate leaders get special attention in Washington. But the ones who are the most feared are media corporations. -Ben H. Bagdikian

They think they’re gonna get away with this. These people who stole the pension funds of the American public. Who stole their money, who stole the future of our kids and grand-kids they think… They’re kleptomaniacs and they think they’re gonna get away with it. They have taken our Democracy and formed it into a klep-tocracy. -Michael Moore

What we have today is a laissez faire American version of feudalism; a private government in the form of private corporations run by private individuals who consolidated power to govern entire activities within our political economy. -Barry C. Lynn

Private monopolies determine the brand of breakfast cereal we eat, the type of car we drive, where we bank, the medical treatment we receive, the fashion of our clothes, and the kind of toothbrush we use, in addition to the beer we drink, the health insurance we buy, and what we feed our pets. -Don Monkerud

What we’ve had since the Industrial Revolution was one or another form of state capitalism. It’s been overwhelmed, certainly in the last century, by big conglomerations of capital corporate structures that are all interlinked with one another and form strategic alliances and administer markets and so on. And are tied up with a very powerful state. So it’s some other kind of system – call it whatever you want. -Noam Chomsky

We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years… It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries. -David Rockefeller (at the Bilderberg Meeting in 1991)

To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we (will then) be taxed in our meat and our drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they (will) be happy. -Thomas Jefferson

They’re upset about the fact that Wall Street has iron control over the economic policies of this country and that one party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the other party caters to them as well. -Alan Grayson (on the Occupy Wall Street movement)

I would have to say that who has had the largest effect on the whole planet without us really paying attention across the board and everywhere is the entire banking industry and their disregard for the people that they’re supposed to be working for… So the ways the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed and taken most of it into their hands is as good as Stalin or Hitler and the evil guys… They’re not heroes, but they are people that had a really huge effect on the way the world is operating. -Mario Batali

The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world – no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men. -Woodrow Wilson

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.” -Philip Slater

The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining super capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control… Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent. -Rep. Larry P. McDonald

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their father’s conquered. -Thomas Jefferson

A private corporation, let’s say General Electric, is, in fact, just a pure tyranny… And when those institutions also control the government, the framework for popular decision-making very much narrows. In fact, that’s the purpose of shrinking government. It’s so that the sphere of popular decision-making will narrow and more decisions will fall into the hands of the private tyrannies. -Noam Chomsky

It is the system of nationalist individualism that has to go… We are living in the end of the sovereign states… In the great struggle to evoke a Westernized World Socialism, contemporary governments may vanish… Countless people… will hate the new world order… and will die protesting against it. -H.G. Wells

 -Allen Ginsberg

The dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens… must be broken, or it will break us. -Thomas Jefferson

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Images: Aaron Bauer, Josh, Nicola Romagna

The post 25 Quotes on Who Really Runs America appeared first on EcoSalon.

War funding could pay for wind energy, high-speed rail, Superfund cleanup and an end to hunger in the United States.

Our communities are depressingly polluted, social services are being cut left and right and hunger is very real right here in America. So hearing that the United States government spends $20 billion in Afghanistan each year on air conditioning alone stings just a little. When it comes to war, the U.S. Treasury is hemorrhaging cash, yet Congress demanded that President Obama cut things like high-speed rail, United Nations support and funds for the Environmental Protection Agency from the 2012 fiscal year budget.

Nobody seems to know exactly how much the government is currently spending on the war in Afghanistan, but various estimates place it around $8 billion per month. If we weren’t buying air conditioners, gas, equipment and personnel to wage a seemingly endless war on the other side of the world, what could our elected officials spend this money on instead?

1. Domestic Hunger Relief

The financial crisis has drastically increased the number of households that are unable to routinely put food on the table, which rose to 17.2 million in 2010. That’s the highest figure ever recorded. More than one in five children in America lives in a household with low food security. According to DoSomething.org, it would cost just $10 to $12 billion per year to virtually end hunger in America. We could solve the problem in a month.

2. High Speed Rail
$8 billion could make major headway for high speed rail in America, a highly efficient public transportation system that would relieve traffic congestion, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, eliminate thousands of tons of greenhouse gas emissions and bolster the economy in depressed areas of the nation. That was the amount originally designated for the project by President Obama in 2009, with chunks of the money going to states like California and Florida, where the first inter-city systems would have been built. Of course, Florida governor Rick Scott returned his $2.4 billion portion in a Tea Party political stunt protesting the president’s $787 billion stimulus bill, and legislators in Ohio and Wisconsin did the same.

3. Public Health Programs

Government-funded health care programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) cost at least $732 billion to run each year, and millions of people across the nation rely on them for basic services like check-ups, tests, procedures and medication. Other programs that have seen drastic cuts in recent years include the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides healthy food and infant formula to new mothers, and community health centers, which serve low-income populations. Contrary to the conservative talking point that these so-called “entitlement services” go to people who don’t really need them, a recent analysis found that more than 90% of the benefit dollars spent on these programs go to people who are elderly, seriously disabled  and/or members of struggling working households. Many conservatives would like to see these programs drastically cut. But if we could expand these services, we could provide life-saving care to people who don’t otherwise have access.

4. Protecting the Environment

The amount of money that pays for a single month of the war in Afghanistan could double the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, enabling it to ramp up crucial initiatives like climate change research, pollution cleanup, air quality improvement and the protection of endangered species. It could also considerably pad the budget of the Department of the Interior, which preserves American wilderness and acquires new federal lands. U.S. budget cuts that have allowed more spending on defense have had a considerable impact on environmental protection efforts. Imagine if just one month of war funding could be put toward these programs instead. The effects on land preservation, including the protection of delicate ecosystems threatened by human encroachment, would be incalculable.

5. Superfund Cleanup

Costs to clean up the hundreds of heavily polluted Superfund sites around the United States outpace the funding that is available, leaving many of these sites to sit for decades before they’re even thoroughly assessed, let alone remediated. In past decades, the EPA has allocated $335 million per year for Superfund cleanup, but new estimates put the costs at $681 million per year. The average cost to clean up a Superfund site is between $25 and $30 million, so $8 billion would eliminate about 300 of the roughly 800 Superfund sites on the waiting list.

Companies are supposed to be responsible for cleaning up the sites, but they’re often bankrupt or out of business, and a tax on petroleum that used to help provide funding was eliminated in 1995. With the EPA hurting for cash, Superfund sites will continue to harm ecosystems and communities. According to the Center for Public Integrity, one in four Americans lives within three miles of a contaminated site that poses serious risks to human  health and the environment.

6. Education

The federal government has allocated $153 billion for education this year, which seems like a lot until you realize that teachers are woefully underpaid, classroom sizes are huge, and many schools are dilapidated to the point of water leakage, mold problems and equipment that is decades out of date. If a year’s worth of war funding were applied to education instead, it would nearly double the total budget, preserving programs like the Americorps-funded Teach for America, a program in which recent college graduates commit two years to teaching before moving on to higher-paying jobs. Or we could take a year’s worth of war funding and award $5500 Pell Grants to over 17.5 million students.

According to the Council of Great City Schools, the nation’s major city public schools have at least $15.3 billion in new construction needs, $46.7 billion in repair, renovation and modernization needs, and $14.4 billion in deferred maintenance needs.

7. Low-Income Housing and Help for the Homeless

The foreclosure crisis, coupled with high unemployment, has led to an ever-increasing number of Americans living on the streets. In addition to unemployment benefits and job creation, affordable housing and counseling for the homeless are absolutely essential to help people get back on their feet. Welfare tends to be a dirty word in American politics, but cutting social safety nets in an era of increasing poverty will only deepen the divide between the haves and the have-nots. And the fact is, because costs for things like uninsured hospitalization, imprisonment and emergency shelters are so high, permanent supportive housing for the homeless would actually reduce the financial burden on taxpayers.

8. Jobs for the Unemployed

If we could get the economy back to a healthy state – a real, viable, sustainable healthy state, not created with the illusions of easy credit and sub-prime mortgages – many of the issues we’re experiencing in America could be alleviated. And what could get us back on track better than millions of new job opportunities for the unemployed? If the government took the roughly $100 billion it costs to fund the Afghanistan war for one year and applied it to President Obama’s American Jobs Act, we could hire more teachers and first responders, get construction workers started on all of those school modernization projects, improve more roads, rehabilitate and repurpose vacant properties and extend the jobs tax credit for the long-term unemployed.

9. Scientific Research

Nearly all scientific research is funded by government grants. But while President Obama promised in a 2009 speech that he would devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development, pumping billions into fields like renewable energy, the federal government has actually cut funding. In an effort to ease the deficit, the 2012 fiscal year budget eliminates $4.4 billion from the $30 billion that it typically spends on ‘basic’ research. And the House cut Obama’s requested $8.5 billion in research for energy down to $5.3. Some experts say that cutting this funding stifles the kind of research that stimulates economic growth.

10. Organic Farming

President Obama allocated $50 million of the $787 billion stimulus package to organic farming in 2009, but with the high costs associated with converting conventional farms to organic farms, that money is a drop in the bucket. This funding provides grants to start organic farms, giving farmers up to $20,000 each per year. So if $8 billion was given over to support for organic farming, 400,000 farmers could transition to chemical-free agricultural methods or start new farms in a single year.

11. Wind Energy

Three million homes could be powered by renewable energy projects on federal lands – if only Congress would approve clean-energy tax credits that support wind power, which is looking unlikely.  Illinois’ once-promising wind industry could fall flat without it, eliminating nearly 2,000 jobs. The cost of the tax credit? $1.4 billion per year. Take a month of war money, extend the tax credit for five years and they’d still have enough cash left over to build a few more of their own wind farms on government-owned property.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Ten women who are role models for perseverance, courage, creativity and leadership.

We live in a time where there are many women who are achieving amazing goals and impacting the lives of women and girls around the world. Here are 10 who have impacted and inspired more than they can count.

Judy Blume
She scandalized parents with Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret and other forthright novels about teenage sexuality. For teenagers in the 1970s, Blume’s books were a validation of all that young women felt and questioned. Girls could instantly identify with Margaret and Deenie, characters that alleviated feelings of personal alienation in a time when sex was not as openly discussed and dissected.

Madonna
Who wasn’t captivated by her Borderline video? When Madonna came out gyrating in ruffled ankle socks on the MTV scene, she was flamboyant and expressive and larger than life. She was the original Lady Gaga who pushed sexual, fashion as well as personal boundaries, and offered (to a young generation of women) freedom of expression that many ran with – neon, mini skirts, lace and all.

Oprah Winfrey
Oprah was the first woman to show us that you didn’t have to be white, thin or generically beautiful to be successful in front of the camera. Oprah’s personality, perseverance and business-savvy garnered her a multimedia empire and proved to girls and women everywhere that heart and smarts are what’s important.

Hillary Clinton
After Hillary Clinton spent eight years serving as First Lady, she went on to serve in the U.S. Senate, ran for president, and then became the U.S. Secretary of State. In no matter what capacity she was serving, the former first lady used her political platform and global presence to champion women’s rights. In 1995, she stood up at the World Conference on Women in Beijing and denounced the mistreatment of women around the world, from female infanticide, to forced abortion, to rape used as a military tactic. She famously proclaimed, “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”

JK Rowling
JK Rowling created the most well-known trio in young adult literary history and enchanted children around the globe, all the while living a real life rags-to-incredible-riches story. With the Harry Potter series, Rowling made reading a fantastic journey that no one wanted to miss so even kids that had no interest in reading were spellbound. Watching children gobble up these giant 600+ page tomes is truly amazing. From the midnight bookstore parties to unprecedented numbers of first print runs, it was a publishing phenomenon that we will probably never see again in our lifetime.

Mia Hamm
When Mia Hamm and the other players on the U.S. Women’s World Cup team came onto the scene, they made girl’s soccer popular and cool. Their World Cup triumph made the world notice female athletes. Mia Hamm posters graced millions of girl’s bedroom walls, and girls saw that sports equal teamwork, friendship and solidarity.

Sheryl Sandberg
Sheryl Sandberg is an engaging speaker and her passion for women in business is infectious. She is known for telling women to “lean in” to their careers and keep climbing the ladder, no matter what, because it is possible for women to lead and have a family. As COO of Facebook, the most popular and well-known company on the planet, we have to wonder how much higher her star can rise. Perhaps she’ll show us that the sky really isn’t the limit.

Kirsten Gillibrand
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand replaced Hillary Clinton as the junior democratic senator for New York in 2009 – a good fit since Gillibrand also has a passion for women’s rights and leadership, and tirelessly campaigns for more women to get involved in politics. A mother of two small children, she makes balancing a family and helping to run the country look easy. She represents women in a forum where there aren’t many women’s voices or perspective, reminding those in government what challenges half the workers in the U.S. and the majority of consumer decision makers face. Gillibrand, and the small number of other women in government, show girls that women can have an impact on how our country is run.

Annie Leonard
EcoSalon just interviewed Annie Leonard a month ago, and anyone who spends twenty years trotting the globe to find out where our trash goes earns the label of saint. In her Story of Stuff videos, Leonard boils complex topics down into simple examples using straightforward language that everyone can understand. Leonard also wants people to understand how empty materialism is and how much it harms the planet and walks the talk wherever she goes.

Melissa McCarthy
Finally the best friend character – the underdog – gets the glory. For once, it’s not the glamour girl, but the girl next door who is being recognized for her talent, her humor and her hard work. McCarthy, who stars on the sitcom Mike and Molly, spent years as the Gilmore Girls sidekick and broke out recently because of her show and women-centered comedy hit, Bridesmaids. Humor and personality should always win.

image credits: NJ State Library, David Shankbone, Alan Light, Marc Nozell, Beacon Radio, Global Sports Forum, JD Lasica, Freedom to Marry, The Story of Stuff, Audi USA, Kara Allyson

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A look at 10 powerful men who have grown to become better people who in turn, better our lives.

We continue to seek leaders among movers and shakers capable of making a difference. Who is out there, we ask, in these bleak times to govern, protect and prosper? Here is a look at some men who have proven able to rise to challenging tasks, become better people with stances of substance, and capable of changing our world in a myriad number of positive ways.

1. Steve Jobs

We can’t help but think of Apple founder Steve Jobs, the single most important figure to date to spring from Silicon Valley, who leaves behind an enormous legacy after losing his battle with pancreatic cancer at 56. Likened to titans Ford and Edison by The Globe and Mail, he lives on in downloaded songs, finger swipes and sleek white headphones – “a man whose vision ended up disrupting almost every creative and commercial industry on Earth” thereby changing the earth as we know it. While cynics have said there is a special place in hell for technology peddlers who insure gadgets are readily replaced, Jobs gave us the convenience factor which made it easier to do what we do most: cyber speak.

It appeared everything he touched turned to gold, from the Macintosh and mouse to the iPad and Pixar. True, he changed the world with his visionary acumen but also the world changed him as he confronted his mortality, telling a graduating class of Stanford University grads that the notion of dying was the biggest catapult in following his heart. “It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

He also cited his firing from Apple at age 30 after taking the company from a fledgling computer brainstorm built in a garage to a $2 billion giant with over 4,000 employees as the best thing that ever happened to him. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. ”

2. Louis Rossetto

The co-founder of  Wired Magazine  has been called a Fair Trade Willie Wonka for his success of adapting Silicon Valley start up tools to the chocolate industry. Rossetto became the first investor and then CEO of TCHO, launched in 2005 on the premise that chocolate should be measured by flavor and not percentage of cacao content, using the Flavor Wheel approach established by NASA contractor Timothy Childs and chocolate industry veteran Karl Bittong.

Shifting the focus to taste and flavor labs and cutting out notorious slave labor practices on plantations in the Ivory Coast and elsewhere, TCHO collaborates with growers and co-ops in cacao-producing countries like Peru, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, teaching growers how to improve methods and secure better prices. “It’s the lowest-cost, most-efficient technology to get the job done,” Rossetto says about the labs, adding it’s not unlike grape growing in Napa Valley where growers can either sell commodity table grapes or get top dollar for premium wine grapes for really good wineries.

The producers now sell from 75 cents up to $8 and margins, boasting big customers like Whole Foods and Starbucks. Across the globe, the chocolate is sold at famous restaurants like Mario Batali’s chain and at Paul Young in London and Fresh and Fresh in Japan. It’s also sold on its website. In 2010, sales were up eight percent across the spectrum and expected to reach double-digit millions and beyond by 2012. First revenues for TCHO started below $1 million in 2009 and tripled last year – demonstrating that fair trade and organic is viable if well supported by believers. Rossetto got friends and family to invest. Today, TCHO produces 10 to 20 tons of chocolate every few weeks from its factory in the heart of San Francisco.

3. Blake Mycoskie

Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes was a kid kicking around in Argentina when the light went off – footwear is a basic need like water and air, and many are without the coverage to protect their feet from harsh environs. He not only launched a fashion movement (the new must-have uniform of school girls) but a charitable movement – distributing over 600,000 pairs of new shoes in 2010 to kids in need through giving partners around the globe.

What changed in him in 2006? Prior to that he demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit starting five businesses before TOMS including a national campus laundry service. Most visionaries see a  hole needing filling, but with TOMS, he changed the way much of the industry sees its role – the ability not to just churn out profits but also to help children around the world. As a result, others are following suit with programs like the Good Shoe Project introduced by Payless ShoeSource and World Vision and the Shoes2Spare project.

The bottom line for the man behind the little shoe that could? Stuff doesn’t make you happy. “When I started distributing shoes in Ethiopia, South Africa, and South America, I saw that the people had so little, yet seemed to worry so much less than my friends and family back home,” he says. “Instead of stressing over gadgets, they were talking around the campfire.”

 4. Michael Moore

Clearly not everyone’s cup of tea –  Michael Moore can rub audiences and subjects the wrong way with his overwrought hubris, and that is entirely the point. But as he ages, he is learning to be a less obnoxious man of the people, something that has overshadowed supporters and detractors alike as his provocations drew attention away from the filmmaker with a focus on the film character. As one of his fellow filmmakers sees it: “Moore is a genius, who created an entire genre of documentary film making using the reflexive mode, and I view him as a pamphleteer, say a modern Thomas Paine, who says provocative things that aren’t always meant to be taken literally.”

Not the academic ilk of a Kevin Burns nor the inconspicuous diplomacy of Michael Apted, Moore has changed in the way he doesn’t so much get in your face and slap it silly but continues to rock the boat like no other documentary film maker, not exposing tainted meat and animal cruelty as much as exposing our inexcusable apathy in accepting corporate crime, insurance fraud, imperialism via drummed up invasions and tolerance of school bullies.

Is it any wonder he joined protesters staging Occupy Wall Street? Coming to their aid, he said “What you see here, and what you’re seeing across the country, are millions of people who’ve had it.” Moore promised to donate proceeds from his book, Here Comes Trouble, to their effort and to deliver wi-fi to the park and to other demonstrations being held across the nation. “I’ll do what I can do,” he offered, “because these bankers overplayed their hand. They were already rich, but filthy rich wasn’t enough. They are trying to turn our democracy from a democracy into a kleptocracy.”

The Flint native and so-called poster boy for the working class does boast nearly 900,000 Twitter followers who have been stirred and shaken by his bawdy cocktails like Stupid White Men and Fahrenheit 911. And while critics have tried to expose Moore as a hypocrite for owning a million-dollar apartment or sending his child to private school,  Moore remains a bigger than life figure who gets us to think.

 5. Dr. Mehmet Oz

“Who is the new great and powerful Oz?” asked the New York Post about the heart surgeon in scrubs who has taken over Oprah’s time slot and the health-bound viewing audience by storm. Described as a genuine medical folk hero in the making by turning genital warts and controversial diets like HCG into entertainment, the TV doc goes further than Dr. Phil by bypassing tabloid tactics in favor of a bare bones anatomy lecture. Like most successful physicians, he started out wanting a good career without fame, but has become the ear for a world obsessed with dieting, aging, longevity and stress, spending 40 minutes answering studio audience questions which many other arrogant doctors would dismiss out of hand or tell patients they don’t need to know the answers.

“Folks are desperate to have a relationship with their healer,” he says. “Marcus Welby is dead today, and they want a regular doctor who they can have a dialogue with and get truthful answers from. I reach a whole lot of people this way.”

As close to a regular guy as a rock star TV celeb can get, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and four kids and considers himself a hermit who shaves rarely, plays basketball with friends and meditates.  One of his assets is his listening skills – which shouldn’t be undermined as most of us are starved for listeners to our complaints and concerns. A big sign of his ability to change us – patients quoting his advice when visiting their own internists. If Dr. Oz thinks something is kosher, then it probably is kosher.

6. Douglas Holtz-Eakins

Who doesn’t love a conservative who changes his course when needed? Among the new directions in the sails of the conservative economist, praising the once debunked American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 as a stimulus that operated exactly as intended, growing the economy and spawning millions of jobs. The former Congressional Budget Office director and former chief economic advisor to Sen John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, pledged in August to throw support behind the bill.

Meantime, while the Tea Party elements insist global warming is a science fiction concept, Holtz-Eakin is now working with the New Hampshire-based Clean Air-Cool planet, addressing the economic benefits of addressing the very real issue. One proposal that entices him is tax-swapping, imposing a levy on carbon emissions while eliminating the payroll tax.

“We have watched with foreboding as powerful forces in the Republican Party want to close down this debate and reject the idea that this is a problem that needs to be solved,” says Brooks Yeager of the climate policy advocacy group. “Our interest in working with someone like Douglas, who has enormous credibility in conservative ranks and economists and agrees with our fundamental position that needs to be solved, is that he is exceptionally well positioned to reopen this debate.”

7. John Stewart

First, he changed his name from John Leibowitz, then he changed his game from his breakthrough comedy role on The Larry Sanders show to the serious business of changing mainstream media. The Daily Show with John Stewart is highly respected for its moxie in telling it like it is while everyone else tiptoes through the tulips and kisses the backsides of corporate sponsors. Or, as aptly put by Hub Brown of the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University: “The stock-in-trade of The Daily Show is hypocrisy exposing hypocrisy and nobody else has the guts to do it. They really know how to crystallize an issue on all sides, see the silliness everywhere.” A prime example was second guessing the war in Iraq while mainstream press was towing the line of national leaders. Stewart decided to take them to task, lampooning Bush policies.

The Comedy Central staple has scored nine consecutive Emmy awards  validating that yes, perhaps the industry has a liberal slant, but also that the truth hurts less than we think when it comes to bashing the Tea Party or even criticizing our leaders, including President Obama’s failure to make inroads with a ridiculously stubborn congress. “Conditions are what they are and Obama is president,” says the host. “You are judged by how well you negotiate those conditions, not by how excusable the shitty end result is based on that it’s difficult.”

 8. Brad Pitt

While some of our moms refuse to forgive him for what he did to Jen, Pitt has revamped his image from willing victim of a home wrecker to determined home repairer in New Orleans. There has been much banter of him there switching to politics, as he rubs shoulders with Nancy Pelosi and the Chief on the New Orleans Housing Project while his better half works for UNICEF.

It’s an accepted fact no one wields more clout than celebs like Pitt who have huge followings among all age groups and tremendous visibility. While Dave Eggers’ poignant prose draws attention to the flood aftermath in Zeitoun, Pitt is allegedly considered a great mayoral candidate of the city – but it is one of many causes he embraces which led Newsweek Magazine to list him as one of 15 People Who Make America Great. Among his contributions is shedding light on neglected causes in Africa as cameras follow him wherever he and his extended family travel. This was the thinking when he and Jolie say they sold the first picture of their daughter, Shiloh, to People magazine for a reported $4million saying all proceeds would go to charity.

“Knowing that someone was going to hound us for that first photo — and was going to profit immensely for doing it — I just couldn’t live with it,” Pitt told the magazine. “We were able to turn that around and collect millions for people who are really going to need it.” Now as he makes the round to plug his film Moneyball, interviews on NPR and elsewhere highlight the intellectual Pitt – whose sensitivity emerges in the film, just as it did in Benjamin Button illustrating old dogs can learn new tricks at any time.

9. Warren Buffett

Read his lips: Yes, new taxes!!! And please let my rich friends step up to the plate. Billionaire Buffett- who inspired Obama’s millionaires’ tax – challenged owner of Fox News Rupert Murdoch to make his own federal tax returns public, after admitting he pays a lower rate than his secretary and the government should stop coddling the super rich “as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species.” A recent CBS news poll showed most Americans agree with Buffett including many who have taken to those Wall Street protests. Militant conservatives are up in arms about it – no doubt viewing Buffett more of a trader than hero, but hero he is for more ways than one.

His stock went way up when joining forces with Bill Gates to urge the wealthy to join the campaign Giving Pledge and to give away at least half of their fortunes during their lifetimes or after their deaths. The 80-year-old Berkshire Hathaway CEO who wants to work past age 100 is famous for maintaining a frugal lifestyle – living in the same home he bought in Omaha in 1958. But his change has come in the way of being much more bold and out there, so to speak, despite how he might be viewed by fellow rich guys and their heirs. As a philanthropist he has set the bar and in seeking more revenues to fund programs, he shows not all billionaires are out for personal gain.

 10. Van Jones

There were such high hopes when Jones became the top green man in the White House – only succumbing to a malicious Tea Party campaign and resigning. “It has been a tough couple of years,” Jones  confessed. “We went from hope to heartbreak in about a minute…We have the wrong theory of the presidency.”

So he is a changed man for the better in terms of seeing bureaucracy only muddles progress. He is now the leading evangelist of the American Dream Movement in partnership with his own organization, Rebuild the Dream – something he told Alternet was for real progressives in 2012 with the goal to train a million new leaders.

“We’re just glad that the volcano is starting to erupt,” he shares. ” We just want to fight. And there are some pre-existing grassroots assets that need to be re-aligned or redeployed; we’re trying to do that here.” The plan calls for house meetings (with real leadership) as well as protests, networking leaders online and locating dream candidates.  Jones sees his new mission as a social battle like no other in history.

“This is thrilling stuff! The dream-killers on Wall Street — who are so disgusting and so despicable; they are ingrates who are sitting up there laughing at us. I mean, every other bloc of capital that has this much weight, they try to do something to make you like them. Even the polluters, they say, ‘We’ll get clean coal.’ They try to do something. But these people on Wall Street – they just don’t care. So it’s just going to be an epic battle now between the worst people in America, the most selfish people in America, and the most selfless. And that’s going to be amazing.”

Images: Acaben; TCHO; Kwaku Alston; Shankbone; Nayrb7; Atlantic; The jointsstaff; Giving; Tedizen; Americanprogressaction, gadgetdude

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ColumnPublicly and privately, politicians are straining credibility.

Years ago, I began to hear a steady stream of rumors about cell phones causing brain cancer. I took these warnings quickly to heart, since I have always been an early adopter when it comes to irrational panic. But my fears were dispelled by a number of medical studies showing that the radiation emitted by cell phones was not a health hazard. These studies were backed up by the Federal Communications Committee and the Environmental Protection Agency, both of which assured consumers that cell phone usage was safe. Now it seems that the World Health Organization has reconsidered its earlier, benign stance on cellphones, and is warning consumers that they may be carcinogenic after all.

Is it just me, or is it hard to trust the people who are supposed to be looking out for our health and well-being?

My distrust of government safety pronouncements is deeply ingrained and dates back to the 1960’s, when the Federal Civil Defense Administration tried to convince me that my best chance of surviving a nuclear attack came from hiding under the wooden desk in my classroom – despite the fact that visual evidence led me to doubt that this small and rickety desk could save me from the firestorm and thermal radiation created by an atomic mushroom cloud.

Since that time, countless other lies and misinformation have been fed to a trusting public:

• The food pyramid, as introduced in 1992, instructed Americans to base their diets on a grain-based foundation of white bread and pasta, until nutritional science proved that advice to be wildly incorrect. The new guidelines have literally toppled the pyramid, which now rests sheepishly on its side and comes with a lithe stick figure scampering up the edge of the fallen pyramid – an activity that, ironically, would be almost impossible for the many Americans who became morbidly obese on the FDA’s previous carb-heavy guidelines.
• In the days and weeks after 9/11, Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, the EPA and OSHA all gave New Yorkers a big, happy thumbs-up, telling them that the unfiltered air downtown was safe to breathe, and that there were no significant health risks to occupants and workers in the affected area. Subsequently, study after study has shown that countless residents and responders who worked on Ground Zero have suffered long term respiratory scarring and illness.
• The Federal Aviation Administration continues to let parents think it’s safe to hold babies under two on their laps during air travel, despite the fact that safety experts agree that unrestrained babies are likely to fly around the cabin like projectile missiles in the event of a crash or even turbulence.
• The USDA has given its approval to injecting ground beef with ammonia, in the hopes that this highly toxic chemical would kill the e. coli and salmonella often found in cheaply-produced meat products. Despite initially telling consumers the beef was safe to eat, the agency now seems to be edging away from this policy, since the dangerous bacteria can still be found in the treated meat. Interestingly, the USDA does not seem particularly concerned about the fact that this beef – which is often sold to school lunch programs – still contains significant amounts of ammonia, which is not generally thought to be one of the healthier or tastier food additives.

I am, naturally, angered and offended that the agencies and officials of my government  find it so easy to be less than entirely honest with me. And yet, I really have no cause to complain – not compared to Maria Shriver and the late Elizabeth Edwards, whose politician husbands never quite got around to telling them that they had fathered children with other women. Government officials may occasionally mislead me, but my outrage pales when compared to that of Huma Abedin, whose husband, Congressman Anthony Weiner, neglected to tell her that he was using his Blackberry to photograph his happy place, and then tweeting those pictures to a wide assortment of coeds.

For politicians, at least, it seems that cancer isn’t the biggest risk that their cell phones may pose.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: California Literary Review

The post Talk Healthy to Me appeared first on EcoSalon.

When I was in high school a few buddies and I finagled our way from Detroit to D.C. to represent Somalia at the Model United Nations. I won’t go into all the sordid details; it’s enough say that the trip is affectionately known in our historical canon as “Fear and Loathing in Washington.”

It was the Year of the Refugee, so we had scored big with our randomly assigned country as Somalia was the unfortunate host of millions of displaced persons. During the first day’s plenary session, we thought it would be a good idea to break the ice by sending a note via floor page to our nemesis, Ethiopia, a country we were at war with and in real life had severed all ties: “Party in our hotel room tonight! Go OAS!” Yes, that refers to the Organization of African States, and no, the hostile delegation did not think this funny.

Within moments of reading our missive, one of our adversaries rose to his feet shrieking to the Chairman: “Point of order! Calling for the immediate censure [or whatever] of Somalia for attempting to initiate contact!” Evidently, we were not allowed to even pass a note to our (c’mon, not really) enemy and we were embarrassingly taken to task in front of the session. We immediately struck back by pointing out to the same Chair the “Ethiopians” failure to wear neckties. This breach of decorum was, it turned out, as grave an error on their part as was our failure to not communicate. Needless to say, we Somalis learned our lesson and avoided our fellows from the Horn of Africa – and co-creators of the world’s largest refugee problem – for the rest of our time in Washington.

No meaningful resolutions were passed.

I recall this story in the light of WikiLeaks’ recent release (to five major news outlets) of a large number of United States diplomatic cables between the State Department and its operations around the world. The “leaks” are the beginning of the third in a series, following the exposure of Afghan War and Iraq War documents earlier this year. The incident has become a global sensation, bringing to light the way in which diplomatic activity is conducted – and calling into question the security of intra- and international communications surrounding that activity. (Adding to the drama was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s recent surrender to British authorities as a result of a sexual assault investigation in Sweden.)

High school memories aside, I do recognize the gravity of the situation here, and I, for one, am as dazzled as anyone by the savage behind-the-scenes elicit interactions, horse trading, strong-arming and bribery that seems to be the norm when it comes to what our American delegations – from the United Nations in New York to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun – like to call “delicate negotiations” or “meetings of the minds.”

Of course, we at EcoSalon are concerned about the diplomacy around climate change negotiations – and as the data comes in regarding what went down in Copenhagen, for example, we’re seeing quite a troubling picture. By way of background, the accord, which allows each nation to choose a target for greenhouse gas cuts, was designed in part to make it easy to get countries likes China and rapidly developing nations on board, though many feel it falls way short of needed measures. Moreover, opponents said it would get in the way of extending the binding provisions of the Kyoto Protocol – placed on richer nations – and it was thus opposed by many poorer countries.

Here’s what we know from the Guardian (guardian.co.uk), one of the five news organizations that has access to the leaks: The United States began “a diplomatic offensive” to get the accord signed and cables show that the U.S. sought “dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming.” This included going after “human intelligence” from UN diplomats. One cable “names specific countries of interest, including China, France, Japan, Mexico, Russia and the European Union, and seeks biographical details of individuals such as credit card and frequent-flyer numbers. It also seeks compromising intelligence on the officials running the climate negotiations, such as ‘efforts by treaty secretariats to influence treaty negotiations or compliance.’”

Meanwhile, the “Basic” nations (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) mounted their opposition. Says another cable: “It is remarkable how closely coordinated the Basic group has become in international fora, taking turns to impede US/EU initiatives and playing the US and EU off against each other. Basic countries have widely differing interests, but have subordinated these to their common short-term goals.”

And then there was another huge player, Saudi Arabia. A cable from Ambassador James Smith says, interestingly, that officials from the oil-producing giant “have suggested that they need to find a way to climb down gracefully from the country’s tough negotiating position. … Saudi officials are very eager to obtain investment credits for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and other technology transfer projects.”

The bottom line is that everyone was maneuvering hard. Some nations were even willing to sell their vote to the highest bidder.

Ugly, huh?

But here’s the rub, and the question on the street in Cancun, where this year’s conference is currently underway. With the fear that back-room dealings might be exposed to the public – including the benign, the ugly muscling and the sometimes uglier beddings among those who don’t want anyone to know that they’re engaged in any contact – could progress be slowed to crawl, or even doomed?

What role could secret talks play in allowing an obstructionist country to “climb down gracefully,” or the U.S. and the E.U. to work together to prevent a China from killing a (more comprehensive than Copenhagen) deal? Or who’s to say that less-developed nations (perhaps even outwardly adversarial ones) ought not to be able to secretly gather in their own smoke-filled rooms to circumvent the agendas of richer nations? After all, from the Middle East to Middle America, anyone familiar with diplomatic negotiations knows that a lot of trees are often quietly felled in very private forests before breakthroughs occur.

This is not to say that exposure of dirty deals and powerful countries abusing less-powerful ones isn’t a good thing. In fact, the WikiLeaks witch-hunt and censorship effort is somewhere between abhorrent and Orwellian.  But some players would tell you this: If next year’s dealings in Durban – where real, binding breakthroughs are not out of the question – were to be conducted with the presumption of complete transparency, progress might be no more than an elusive dream.

So here is the essential quandary of the Wikileaks phenomenon. Says Julian Assange in yesterday’s The Australian: “The truth will always win.” Nice sentiment. Will it? So much of what has been revealed is opening the world’s eyes to the gruesome underbelly of how nations deal with each other to manipulate people and populations to the benefit of the greedy and the powerful. Yet the question remains, without the ability for nations to conduct business in private, would certain essential bridges never be built, subterranean ties never be made, diplomatic infrastructure never exist that could open doors to change and allow for conflict resolution?

There’s a lot of support for WikiLeaks out there. And there are a lot of critics. But there are a lot of mixed feelings, as well. “What ifs” are easy, but I have to ask these questions: If every Soviet constituency knew of Mikhail Gorbachev’s interactions with Washington, would he have made it to the finish line? If certain Republicans knew of Richard Nixon’s interactions with Mao Tse-Tung, would relations with China have opened? How much sooner might Anwar Sadat have been murdered had his back-room dealings with Menachem Begin been revealed? There are no easy answers, but there’s a lot to consider, as well as a lot of trust going on that publications like the The New York Times, Der Spiegel and the Guardian will be making some wise decisions.

In the meantime, in the world’s diplomatic circles the question continues to be asked, often in secret: “Can we talk?” The answer:  “Maybe. Depends who’s listening.”

Image: p373

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It’s no secret that anything resembling an environmental protection law that even nods to the possibility of human-induced climate change is under sustained and rabid attack by industry groups and the politicians who represent them. (Okay. Breathing.) The tactic over the last two years has been to go after the EPA, which is charged with creating regulations that abide by these laws. Myriad word bombs and legal challenges over the organization’s ethics and tactics have been lobbed at it by climate change deniers for years now.

Well, the Justice Department just made it clear in legal briefing that if you got a problem with the EPA, you should take it up with Congress. (Note: Today’s the day we take stuff up with Congress.) The government’s environmental watchdog is simply executing on existing law. If you’re a member of Congress, then take it up with yourself. Bottom line? If you don’t like what’s going down, change the law, and leave the EPA out of it.

Here’s the verbiage: As reported in Politico, the filing states that states, industry groups and other groups’ objections to EPA rules (here related primarily to the Clean Air Act) “is not really to EPA’s actions; rather it is to the decisions Congress made and to the strict requirements Congress itself imposed on sources of air pollution.”

So it’s the law, stupid. Well, it’s the law for now, anyway. The target on the back of these laws (and efforts to strengthen and update them) may be more attainable for climate change deniers when you get up tomorrow morning. To be fair, both parties have a problem with the existing antiquated Clean Air Act, though efforts to create new law didn’t make it though Congress as it was the last two years. (So keep in that going forward now, we’re not even talking progress. We’re talking about maintaining whatever footholds have been established in recent decades.)

Consider this: Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the favorite to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee if control of the House changes, says he’s geared up to investigate administration’s “poisonous regulations.” In fact, he told Politico that “If we have the gavel, I can assure you that the oversight subcommittee will be very busy. We’ll have a seat reserved for [the administration’s top climate and energy advisor Carol Browner].” EPA administrator Lisa Jackon would doubtless be spending a lot of time on the Hill, as well.

Attempting to go with a non-partisan note here, we all have varied opinions on what needs to happen in the arena of federal environmental law. Just ask yourself what it is you want and keep that in mind when you, if you haven’t already, go act on your wishes, that is to say, Vote. Now, please.

Image: samantha celera

The post The Law of Land and Sea and Air: Yet <em>Another</em> Reason to Vote! appeared first on EcoSalon.

1. Highways

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When gas prices rose dramatically in 2008, Americans began flocking to mass transit in droves, resulting in declining revenues for the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Naturally, the Bush Administration’s response was to take money from already underfunded mass transit and use it to pay for highways that are already, as Slate put it, “paved with gold”. Billions of dollars are pumped into the highway system every year, which encourages the polluting car culture and leads to further sprawl, while mass transit continues to fall by the wayside.

2. SUVs

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In case you aren’t already taking optimal advantage of the polluting power of our nation’s sprawling web of highways, the government would like to make your impact even greater by setting you up in a nice gas-guzzling subsidized SUV. A portion of the tax code revised in 2003 gives business owners a huge deduction for up to 30% of a large vehicle’s cost, which can add up to $25,000 in the case of a Hummer – far more than the credit given to individual purchasers of energy-efficient vehicles. Attempts to axe this provision in 2007 failed.

You only get the credit if it seats more than 9 passengers or weighs more than 14,000 pounds, but they don’t really care whether your business actually requires such a vehicle. So, by all means, get the Escalade.

3. Paper Mills

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Paper mills cut down trees while sucking up massive amounts of fossil fuels and get big money from the government to do it – all through a loophole in a law that was supposed to benefit renewable energy. A law enacted in 2005 contains a section that gives businesses an incentive to mix alternative energy sources with fossil fuels. To qualify for the tax credit, paper companies started adding diesel fuel to “black liquor”, a pulp-making byproduct that they were already using to generate electricity on its own.

But time might be running out for this egregious misuse of taxpayer money: the unemployment extension bill approved by the Senate and on its way to the House would eliminate this loophole and use the funds for health care. (Editor’s note: We’ve contacted both the editor and writer of this story at BusinessWeek to confirm that this loophole will still be closed in the bill just passed by the Senate, and will update if more information becomes available. In the meantime, there’s this resource which seems to confirm the loophole is in fact being closed.)

4. Commercial Fishing

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About half of the $713 million in subsidies given to the U.S. fishing industry directly contributes to overfishing, according to a new study by the Environmental Working Group. The subsidies – which equal about a fifth of the value of the catch itself – lower overhead costs and promote increased fishing capacity, meaning more fish are caught than can be naturally replaced.

Overfishing is a huge environmental problem – up to 25% of the world’s fishery stocks are overexploited or depleted, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.  But that’s not the only result of the subsidies; because roughly half of the money goes toward fuel costs, other consequences include wasteful fuel consumption as well as air and water pollution.

5. Nuclear Power

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The nuclear industry’s decade-long, $600 million lobbying effort finally paid off as President Obama agreed to grant loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.  Obama has been promising since the early days of his campaign that he would find a way to “safely harness nuclear power”, but the $55 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantees are going forward despite continued reservations about uranium mining and the storage of radioactive waste.

6. Factory Farming

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American factory farms are literally filthy cesspools of their own making, and who else is cleaning up all that shit but American taxpayers? Giant factory farms make up just 2% of the livestock farms in the U.S. yet raise 40% of all animals in the U.S., and they do it using practices that are not only harmful to workers and the animals themselves, but to the environment.

The government heavily subsidizes factory farms so they can provide über-cheap meat and dairy, raising as many animals as possible in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of care. And why should they care about finding better ways to manage manure when the government hands them $125 million annually to “deal” with the consequences, and then doesn’t bother to check up on them?

Despite the backwards funding given to clean them up, gaping lagoons of livestock waste packed with pollutants continue to be one of the biggest environmental problems in America, fouling our water and causing those depressing dead zones in our oceans.

7.  Corn Ethanol

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In the quest to beat back fossil fuels, cleaner fuels that we can grow seemed like a good idea – until we realized that some, like corn, make a huge dent in the world’s food supply. But that isn’t stopping the U.S. government from giving billions in subsidies to the corn industry in general, and corn ethanol in particular.

Corn-based ethanol gobbled up 76% of federal government renewable energy subsidies in 2007, leaving little for more environmentally sound renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Worse yet, it’s a huge drain on water resources, gulping down up to 2,138 liters of water per liter of ethanol.

This isn’t just an unwise investment – it’s also destroying the rainforest. As American farmers have abandoned soy for subsidized corn, soy prices have risen worldwide – and led to an increase in Amazon deforestation. Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer of soy next to the U.S., and growing demand has meant more clear-cutting for soy plantations.

8. Processed Foods

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Ethanol isn’t the only product that comes to us courtesy of U.S. corn subsidies. There’s also plenty of craptastic processed “food” products packed with multiple subsidized ingredients: wheat, sugar, soy and of course, corn. Gee, could the obesity epidemic have anything to do with the fact that our government makes junk food cheap, and encourages its consumption through the food stamp program?

It’s a sad state of affairs when a Twinkie costs less, calorically speaking, than a carrot. Meanwhile, farmers who produce fruits and vegetables (aside from corn), don’t get a dime in government subsidies. While the government is considering junk food taxes, a change to the Farm Bill might be more efficient.

9. Coal

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You would think that the coal industry’s long-held dominance of the American energy market would have eliminated the need for subsidies. After all, the industry spent $47 million last year on PR alone. But the fact is, coal companies are milking the government for all it’s worth while continuing to pump greenhouse gases and carcinogens into the air and turn the Appalachian Mountains into post-apocalyptic hellholes.

Coal subsidies have survived this long because of the industry’s staggering influence on lawmakers, and because constituents in coal states often fear the economic repercussions of a scaled-back coal industry more than they fear the harm to their health and homes. And on top of the federal coal subsidies lumped in under “˜fossil fuels’, the industry gets untold breaks on a state and local level in places like Kentucky, where the coal industry netted $115 million in subsidies in 2006.

10. Oil

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Climate change: brought to you by the U.S. government! According to a study by the Environmental Law Institute, fossil fuels received over $70 billion in subsidies between 2002 and 2008, while traditional sources of renewable energy were given just $12.2 billion.

But the oil industry won’t even admit that the direct spending and tax breaks they get are subsidies – they prefer to call them “incentives”, and claim that attempts to roll back some of those subsidies are actually “new taxes”.

As Grist notes, the ELI report is actually pretty conservative – it didn’t include things like military spending to defend oil in the Middle East or infrastructure spending. But the fossil fuel industry’s free ride is almost over: President Obama’s new federal budget proposal wipes out these breaks and increases funding for clean energy research (and, unfortunately, nuclear power).

Photo credits: The following photos are from Flickr and licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons: “Freeway” by Payton Chung; “SUV” by The Car Spy; “Paper mill in Washington State” by Jan Tik; “Fish face” by Andy Welsh; “Nuclear reactor” by Intamin10; “Factory farm protest sign” by johnnyalive; “Corn” by normanack;  “Coal” by Duncan Harris; “Oil rig” by kenhodge13.

The post The 10 Least Green Government Subsidies appeared first on EcoSalon.

Urban sprawl, pollution, over-consumption, deforestation…like it or not, U.S. taxpayers are still paying for all of these things to occur in America and beyond. Despite recent investments in green jobs and technology, an array of government subsidies pay big dirty industries like oil, coal and factory farms to destroy the environment in every way possible while greener, healthier industries like solar power and vegetable farms get a pittance.

10. Highways

When gas prices rose dramatically in 2008, Americans began flocking to mass transit in droves, resulting in declining revenues for the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Naturally, the Bush Administration’s response was to take money from already underfunded mass transit and use it to pay for highways that are already, as Slate put it, “paved with gold”. Billions of dollars are pumped into the highway system every year, which encourages the polluting car culture and leads to further sprawl, while mass transit continues to fall by the wayside.

9. SUVs

In case you aren’t already taking optimal advantage of the polluting power of our nation’s sprawling web of highways, the government would like to make your impact even greater by setting you up in a nice gas-guzzling subsidized SUV. A portion of the tax code revised in 2003 gives business owners a huge deduction for up to 30% of a large vehicle’s cost, which can add up to $25,000 in the case of a Hummer – far more than the credit given to individual purchasers of energy-efficient vehicles. Attempts to axe this provision in 2007 failed.

You only get the credit if it seats more than 9 passengers or weighs more than 14,000 pounds, but they don’t really care whether your business actually requires such a vehicle. So, by all means, get the Escalade.

8. Paper Mills

Paper mills cut down trees while sucking up massive amounts of fossil fuels and get big money from the government to do it – all through a loophole in a law that was supposed to benefit renewable energy. A law enacted in 2005 contains a section that gives businesses an incentive to mix alternative energy sources with fossil fuels. To qualify for the tax credit, paper companies started adding diesel fuel to “black liquor”, a pulp-making byproduct that they were already using to generate electricity on its own.

But time might be running out for this egregious misuse of taxpayer money: the unemployment extension bill approved by the Senate and on its way to the House would eliminate this loophole and use the funds for health care. (Editor’s note: We’ve contacted both the editor and writer of this story at BusinessWeek to confirm that this loophole will still be closed in the bill just passed by the Senate, and will update if more information becomes available. In the meantime, there’s this resource which seems to confirm the loophole is in fact being closed.)

7. Commercial Fishing

About half of the $713 million in subsidies given to the U.S. fishing industry directly contributes to overfishing, according to a new study by the Environmental Working Group. The subsidies – which equal about a fifth of the value of the catch itself – lower overhead costs and promote increased fishing capacity, meaning more fish are caught than can be naturally replaced.

Overfishing is a huge environmental problem – up to 25% of the world’s fishery stocks are overexploited or depleted, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.  But that’s not the only result of the subsidies; because roughly half of the money goes toward fuel costs, other consequences include wasteful fuel consumption as well as air and water pollution.

6. Nuclear Power

The nuclear industry’s decade-long, $600 million lobbying effort finally paid off as President Obama agreed to grant loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.  Obama has been promising since the early days of his campaign that he would find a way to “safely harness nuclear power”, but the $55 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantees are going forward despite continued reservations about uranium mining and the storage of radioactive waste.

5. Factory Farming

American factory farms are literally filthy cesspools of their own making, and who else is cleaning up all that shit but American taxpayers? Giant factory farms make up just 2% of the livestock farms in the U.S. yet raise 40% of all animals in the U.S., and they do it using practices that are not only harmful to workers and the animals themselves, but to the environment.

The government heavily subsidizes factory farms so they can provide über-cheap meat and dairy, raising as many animals as possible in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of care. And why should they care about finding better ways to manage manure when the government hands them $125 million annually to “deal” with the consequences, and then doesn’t bother to check up on them?

Despite the backwards funding given to clean them up, gaping lagoons of livestock waste packed with pollutants continue to be one of the biggest environmental problems in America, fouling our water and causing those depressing dead zones in our oceans.

4.  Corn Ethanol

In the quest to beat back fossil fuels, cleaner fuels that we can grow seemed like a good idea – until we realized that some, like corn, make a huge dent in the world’s food supply. But that isn’t stopping the U.S. government from giving billions in subsidies to the corn industry in general, and corn ethanol in particular.

Corn-based ethanol gobbled up 76% of federal government renewable energy subsidies in 2007, leaving little for more environmentally sound renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Worse yet, it’s a huge drain on water resources, gulping down up to 2,138 liters of water per liter of ethanol.

This isn’t just an unwise investment – it’s also destroying the rainforest. As American farmers have abandoned soy for subsidized corn, soy prices have risen worldwide – and led to an increase in Amazon deforestation. Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer of soy next to the U.S., and growing demand has meant more clear-cutting for soy plantations.

3. Processed Foods

Ethanol isn’t the only product that comes to us courtesy of U.S. corn subsidies. There’s also plenty of craptastic processed “food” products packed with multiple subsidized ingredients: wheat, sugar, soy and of course, corn. Gee, could the obesity epidemic have anything to do with the fact that our government makes junk food cheap, and encourages its consumption through the food stamp program?

It’s a sad state of affairs when a Twinkie costs less, calorically speaking, than a carrot. Meanwhile, farmers who produce fruits and vegetables (aside from corn), don’t get a dime in government subsidies. While the government is considering junk food taxes, a change to the Farm Bill might be more efficient.

2. Coal

You would think that the coal industry’s long-held dominance of the American energy market would have eliminated the need for subsidies. After all, the industry spent $47 million last year on PR alone. But the fact is, coal companies are milking the government for all it’s worth while continuing to pump greenhouse gases and carcinogens into the air and turn the Appalachian Mountains into post-apocalyptic hellholes.

Coal subsidies have survived this long because of the industry’s staggering influence on lawmakers, and because constituents in coal states often fear the economic repercussions of a scaled-back coal industry more than they fear the harm to their health and homes. And on top of the federal coal subsidies lumped in under “˜fossil fuels’, the industry gets untold breaks on a state and local level in places like Kentucky, where the coal industry netted $115 million in subsidies in 2006.

1. Oil

Climate change: brought to you by the U.S. government! According to a study by the Environmental Law Institute, fossil fuels received over $70 billion in subsidies between 2002 and 2008, while traditional sources of renewable energy were given just $12.2 billion.

But the oil industry won’t even admit that the direct spending and tax breaks they get are subsidies – they prefer to call them “incentives”, and claim that attempts to roll back some of those subsidies are actually “new taxes”.

As Grist notes, the ELI report is actually pretty conservative – it didn’t include things like military spending to defend oil in the Middle East or infrastructure spending. But the fossil fuel industry’s free ride is almost over: President Obama’s new federal budget proposal wipes out these breaks and increases funding for clean energy research (and, unfortunately, nuclear power).

Photo credits: The following photos are from Flickr and licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons: “Freeway” by Payton Chung; “SUV” by The Car Spy; “Paper mill in Washington State” by Jan Tik; “Fish face” by Andy Welsh; “Nuclear reactor” by Intamin10; “Factory farm protest sign” by johnnyalive; “Corn” by normanack;  “Coal” by Duncan Harris; “Oil rig” by kenhodge13.

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