Environment

Democracy Now! Features CMD's Work Spotlighting BP

Investigative journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez recently featured our investigations and analysis of BP's greenwashing and spin. The interview highlights our work responding to BP's involvement in California's environmental curriculum for primary and secondary students, a story broken by Rick Daysog and the Sacramento Bee.

The extensive interview, a transcript of which is available here, also highlights our continuing coverage of BP's use of toxic dispersants. It also helped spread the word about our objections to the judges siding with the oil industry against the proposed deep-sea drilling ban. The interview also discusses CMD's work exposing the millionaire fat cats behind the misleading attack ads against Senator Russ Feingold.

San Francisco's Free "Organic Biosolids Compost" is Toxic Sludge, and Not Good For You!

Independent testing commissioned by the Food Rights Network found toxic contaminants in San Francisco's sewage sludge "compost." In the sludge product given away free to gardeners from 2007 to March 4, 2010, are contaminants with endocrine-disruptive properties including PBDE flame retardants, nonylphenol detergent breakdown products, and the antibacterial agent triclosan. The independent tests were conducted for the Food Rights Network by Dr. Robert C. Hale of the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.

Watch a CBS 5 KPIX August 10, 2010 report providing a startling story of how San Francisco is violating its own precautionary principle law by dumping toxic sludge on city gardens.

The Dirtiest Sport

The recession affected every sector and industry of the economy. Amongst those hardest hit was the sport that some feel rivals baseball as America's pastime: NASCAR. With less spending money in the average American's pocket, all professional sports leagues suffered -- but NASCAR, which experienced tremendous growth in the early 2000s, saw reduced attendance at every race this past year.

T-Boone Pickens and the Truth about All that Drilling

T. Boone PickensThe home page of T. Boone Pickens' "Pickens Plan" is emblematic of the oil industry's aggressive push to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale basin. The page greets visitors with the blaring headline, "WE MUST BREAK AMERICA'S ADDICTION TO FOREIGN OIL. The Pickens Plan will do it, but we need your help."

In the age of the perpetual War on terrorism, politicians, pundits and other U.S. demagogues have successfully used fear as a bargaining chip. Fear-mongering is a method of Orwellian thought control. In this example, Pickens equates foreign oil with evil, similar to the Bush Administration's Orewellian logic regarding American's position in the world: "You're either with us, or you're with the enemy." Bush put forth a false paradigm of absolute good versus absolute evil. The Bush Administration used fear as a political tool after 9/11 to march the country into war, and convince citizens that we need to permit domestic spying to keep us safe domestically. (Think Patriot Act). Fear also led to the heinous crimes committed at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib Detention Centers.

Tom Ridge Joins the Marcellus Shale Coalition's Natural Gas Gold Rush

Tom Ridge's bookFormer Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has, for the most part, been out of the spotlight for the past year since he wrote his book titled The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...And How We Can Be Safe Again, which came out in September of 2009. In that book, Ridge confessed that, although unsurprising to anyone who understood the rampant fear-mongering and propaganda that took place in the post-9/11 Bush era, he was pressured by others in the Bush Administration to purposely manipulate the infamous color-coded National Security Alerts for political reasons, and in particular, during the run-up to former President George W. Bush's re-election in 2004.

Are Oil Companies Greenwashing Gulf Coast Cleanup?

Submitted by Anne Landman on

Sandra Bullock stars in Sandra Bullock, Lenny Kravitz, Harry Shearer and a slew of other celebrities jumped on the bandwagon to star in a public service announcement called "Be the One," to support Restore the Gulf, a campaign to encourage people to sign a petition saying, "I demand

No
Main Source: 
Think Progress, July 29, 2010
Topics: 
Crisis Management
Front Groups
Environment

Gavin Newsom Hopes to Leave His Sludge in San Francisco

Last month, I wrote Chez Sludge, the first inside report on the sewage sludge scandal unfolding in San Francisco, based on internal documents obtained by the Food Rights Network and now online in the Toxic Sludge wiki on SourceWatch.

San Francisco, under its "green mayor" Gavin Newsom, has since 2007 perpetrated a greenwashing scam upon city gardeners. The city, known for its environmentally sound practices and commitment to a precautionary principle approach to dealing with environmental hazards, has deceptively and fraudulently been giving away free "organic Biosolids compost," that is actually nothing but toxic sewage sludge from San Francisco and eight other counties, "composted" by the giant waste handler Synagro.

Unsafe From Any Gulf

America's voracious oil consumption is criticized for many reasons in the media today, but three reasons seem to dominate the headlines. First, the Gulf oil disaster has galvanized public outrage at oil companies and led to questioning of our energy needs which push oil rigs out into treacherous deep waters. Second, climate change attracts significant attention, as academy award-winning films are made on the topic and the manufactured "Climategate"; scandal fills news articles with tales of espionage. Finally, as the Iraq War drags on and tensions with Iran remain high, every politician is giving lip service to the national security threat created by "our dependence on foreign oil." But what often gets ignored is perhaps the most obvious and persistent problem involved with oil use: air pollution.

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