Environment

Global warming, healthy food, clean water, population control, and nature protection. Comprehensive coverage on Environment here.

GOP Senators on Environment Committee Hit All-Time Low, Third-Graders Have More Maturity
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on November 4, 2009 at 1:59 PM.

Keeping in step with the rest of the Party of No, this week 6 of the 7 Republicans on the Senate's Environment and Public Works committee are refusing to show up in a desperate attempt to stall action on the climate and clean energy bill.

Reminder me again why these people are paid public servants?

Their apparent gripe is that they want EPA to do more extensive modeling runs on the proposed legislation. But really, what they want is to make sure we never have a viable climate bill and most certainly not before Copenhagen.

Of course, the EPA has already done modeling on all of this -- 90 percent is the same as the House bill from last Spring. The Washington Post reported that the data was analyzed closely by EPA, the Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration and many NGOs. "Indeed, EPA Associate Administrator David McIntosh said Tuesday that the differences wouldn't even show up in the agency's computer modeling, leaving little reason to conduct a completely new analysis before committee work commences," the Washington Post reported.

So, their stunt is pure bogus and their motivation is equally sad. Noreen Nielson, Director for Energy Communications at Progressive Media writes:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Meet Some of the People Who Have Jobs Thanks to Obama's Recovery Act
Posted by Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, AlterNet on November 4, 2009 at 11:46 AM.

640,329

That figure represents the number of jobs that have been created or saved so far through the Recovery Act, according to a report released by the Obama administration on Friday.

But the true significance of this number lies in the people behind it.

People like Thalia Williams. Thalia is a single mother of a 3-year-old son, in Brooklyn, NY. "Construction is something that I wanted to do for a long time," she said. "I had no way of knowing how to get into this field because I always heard it was a man's world."

Now, thanks to an organization that is able to expand and recruit women using Recovery Act funds, Thalia has a job weatherizing homes in New York.

Watch her story here.

Thalia is just one of thousands of people who are finding jobs, hope, and opportunity in the clean-energy economy.

Their stories show the true return on investment that America’s communities are reaping from Recovery Act funding. (You can see more stories from the growing green economy on Green For All’s Green Economy Roadmap).

With just over one-quarter of the Recovery funds paid out, the jobs and opportunity created will only grow in the coming months.

In addition to creating jobs in the short term, the Recovery Act is proving to be an essential jumpstart to the clean-energy economy, seeding new programs and expanding successful models across the country.

But the Recovery Act was primarily meant to stabilize our economy in the midst of a sweeping recession, and most funding from the Act will end by 2011. To build a thriving, healthy economy for future generations, we need long-term investment and policies.

Congress now has the historic opportunity to provide that long-term stability, and build on the foundation laid by the Recovery Act through climate and clean-energy legislation.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »