Local Ordinances and Land Grabs: Democracy Convention Panels Discuss Food Sovereignty
Attendees of the Democracy Convention in Madison in late August were treated to panels on a host of different issues, from democratic media to racial inequality.
Environment
Koch's "Response" Agrees with Parts of Greenpeace Toxic Koch Report
By John Deans of Greenpeace, August 26, 2011.
On August 25, 2011, Koch Industries issued a response to the Greenpeace report that CMD cross-posted last week, via KochFacts.com. Below is Greenpeace's August 26, 2011, counter-response to Koch. The original can be found here.
Toxic Koch: Keeping Americans at Risk of a Poison Gas Disaster
By Will Vickery
Since 9/11, Koch Industries Has Fought Against Tougher Government Rules on Chemical Plants
By John Aloysius Farrell, Ben Wieder and Evan Bush
The Center for Media and Democracy is re-posting this article from John Aloysius Farrell, Ben Wieder, and Evan Bush at iWatch News, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, as part of our effort to track Koch Industries and ALEC via our ALECexposed.org project and to expose corporate spin. The original can be found here. For more, see Farrell's April 2011 article "Koch's web of influence" and Cole Goins' August 2011 article "What's it like living near a chemical plant?," both also on iWatch. To find out about chemical plants near you, download the spreadsheet of data gathered from the risk management plans that Koch files with the EPA.
Gore Condemns Dirty Industry PR Tactics that Sow Doubt on Global Warming
Submitted by Anne Landman on
Almost two years ago, former health insurance PR executive Wendell Potter published his tell-all book, Deadly Spin, about the deceptive media campaigns and PR trickery the health insurance industry uses to beat back meaningful health care reform in the U.S. Potter pointed out the striking similarities between the insurers' tactics and those the tobacco industry applied for decades to delay regulation and confuse people about the health hazards of smoking and secondhand smoke. These manipulative PR tactics held off meaningful tobacco regulation for over 40 years, and also proved highly successful for the insurance industry, which used the same strategies to defeat true health care reform. Now Al Gore is pointing out that the energy, steel and utility industries are applying those same, tricky and time-worn PR strategies to confuse people about global warming and delay efforts to address it.
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General Electric's Jim Cramer Heads to Midwest to Cheerlead for Fracking
Today, CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer's "Invest in America" series will take the show to a seemingly unlikely locale. The crew will head to a place many would consider the middle of nowhere -- the state of North Dakota.
Why North Dakota? Four words: The Bakken Shale Formation.
Referred to as "Kuwait on the Prairie" by The New Yorker in an April 2011 feature story and located predominately in northwest North Dakota, the shale formation possesses a vast amount of both oil and methane ("natural") gas, gathered via the notorious fracking process. Recognizing the economic opportunities that the formation would present to fossil fuel corporations, the U.S. Energy Information Administration penned a report in November 2006 titled "Technology-Based Oil and Natural Gas Plays: Shale Shock! Could There Be Billions in the Bakken?", highlighting them in some depth.
Plastic Bag Manufacturers Edit California Textbooks
Submitted by Anne Landman on
The American Chemistry Council (ACC), a lobbying group representing plastic bag manufacturers, successfully convinced the California Department of Education to rewrite its environmental textbooks and teachers' guides to include positive statements about plastic grocery bags. ACC wrote a letter to education department officials that said in part, "To counteract what is perceived as an exclusively negative positioning of plastic bag issues, we recommend adding a section here entitled 'Benefits of Plastic Shopping Bags.'" The state's final document was, in fact, edited to contain a new section titled "Advantages of Plastic Shopping Bags."
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Tar Sands Action to Commence Saturday at White House
Saturday marks the commencement of the Tar Sands Action, which will take place in front of the White House.
It is a two-week long civil disobedience campaign, planned to last through September 3, demanding that the Obama Administration turn down the proposal to build the Keystone XL Pipeline.
The 1,980-mile pipeline is slated to transport the dirtiest oil in the world from Alberta's tar sands down to southeast Texas. The pipeline's route overlaps with the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies 82 percent of the people that live within the aquifer's boundary their drinking water. It would also snake through the Nebraska Sand Hills, which is a vital wetland ecosystem, containing a diverse array of plant and animal life.
CMD Urges EPA to More Closely Regulate Nanoscale Materials in Pesticides
The Center for Media and Democracy has joined a coalition of environmental, consumer and worker's groups in signing onto a letter of concern about nanotechnology. The comment, drafted by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), supports the plan of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to obtain information about the presence of nanoscale materials in pesticide products.
Top Companies Claim To Fight Global Warming, But Sponsor ALEC’s Climate Denial
(By Brad Johnson, reposted from ThinkProgress, August 8, 2011)
The fight against global warming pollution requires the investment of everyone, including the world's multinational corporate giants. Many companies have taken official stances on climate pollution, pledging to reduce their greenhouse footprint in order to reduce the threat of a destabilized climate.
However, a number of these same companies are sponsoring toxic, far-right denial of climate science. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) pushes an extremist denier agenda throughout the United States, funded in secret by corporations. ThinkProgress has acquired a list of the sponsors of ALEC's 2011 annual meeting, held last week in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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