350.org on Judge Ordering Review of Documents Related to Trump’s Keystone XL Decision

350.org on Judge Ordering Review of Documents Related to Trump’s Keystone XL Decision

Inside the Trump Admin's Fight to Keep the Keystone XL Approval Process Secret

Inside the Trump Admin's Fight to Keep the Keystone XL Approval Process Secret

Anti-pipeline activists set to converge on Burnaby Mountain in March

Anti-pipeline activists set to converge on Burnaby Mountain in March

Ballot box battle over clean energy is brewing in three states

Ballot box battle over clean energy is brewing in three states

‘An Endless War’: Why 4 U.S. Soldiers Died in a Remote African Desert

‘An Endless War’: Why 4 U.S. Soldiers Died in a Remote African Desert

We will be discussing next week... we've been saying this for five years now.   Endless, meaningless intervention in places we cannot even find on a map.

MI: Campaign wants to push insurers away from US coal after progress in Europe

""If our world gets 4°C hotter, it will no longer be insurable," AXA wrote. "As a global insurer and investor, it is up to us to set an example by slowing climate change as much as possible, while there is still time.""



MI: Campaign wants to push insurers away from US coal after progress in Europe

Federal Grants Meant for Clean Coal Misspent on Liquor, Spas

Federal Grants Meant for Clean Coal Misspent on Liquor, Spas

Billionaire Trump Foe Behind Solar Energy Measures in Arizona, Other States

Billionaire Trump Foe Behind Solar Energy Measures in Arizona, Other States



OK, this is one way to make things happen...

Trump budget would gut EPA, DOE renewables office

Trump budget would gut EPA, DOE renewables office



And again, why the Trump administration is insane.

No Drop in U.S. Carbon Footprint Expected Through 2050, Energy Department Says

Why the Trump administration is insane.

No Drop in U.S. Carbon Footprint Expected Through 2050, Energy Department Says

Candidate Ejected From West Virginia House Floor for Listing Lawmakers’ Oil and Gas Donors

Candidate Ejected From West Virginia House Floor for Listing Lawmakers’ Oil and Gas Donors

Tillerson’s Mideast Trip Was Already Daunting. Then Israel and Iran Collided.

Tillerson’s Mideast Trip Was Already Daunting. Then Israel and Iran Collided.

The convergence of fossil fuel industries, and the rightward shift of anti-immigrant labor in Europe, as foretold by Mitchell: Workers of Germany, Unite: The New Siren Call of the Far Right

Workers of Germany, Unite: The New Siren Call of the Far Right

Exceptional Victims: On Militarism, Race, and Exceptionalism

"The new exceptionalism is born of the vilification of the antiwar movement and the veneration of U.S. troops as heroic victims."

Exceptional Victims  (Christian Appy, in the Boston Review)

To understand our current political moment, we must understand how political and media forces, especially on the right, responded to this embarrassment and to criticisms such as King’s. Conservatives at the time were determined to rebuild everything they thought the war had destroyed—U.S. power, pride, prestige, and patriotism. Above all, they sought to resuscitate a faith in U.S. exceptionalism. That restoration project was surprisingly successful, but it produced a new, makeshift form of U.S. exceptionalism that is different from its original model. In place of the universalistic, idealistic, intrinsically confident faith in national superiority of the 1950s, the post-Vietnam version of exceptionalism is ever more nationalistic, defensive, bombastic, and xenophobic. Both versions are dangerously imperialistic and aggressive, but our latest model is more explicitly founded on a demonization of foreign—primarily nonwhite—others.

Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the new U.S. exceptionalism is the belief that the world’s greatest nation is not the envy of the world, not a shining city on a hill, but the victim of outrageous and inexplicable attacks from nonwhite countries and cultures. Whether the attacks are real (such as 9/11) or imagined (such as Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction), they are almost always attributed to “rogue” nations, terrorist groups, religious extremists, or nonwhite immigrants whose actions are represented as barbaric hate crimes with no plausible historical motive or U.S. provocation.

The new U.S. exceptionalism has many sources but two important ones were born from the bitter memory of failure and defeat in Vietnam: the effective campaigns to vilify the antiwar movement and to instill deference to the military by constructing an image of U.S. troops and veterans as icons of heroic victimhood. 

MI: For 2018, EIA looks to get renewables right

MI: For 2018, EIA looks to get renewables right

Black Lung Study Finds Biggest Cluster Ever Of Fatal Coal Miners' Disease

Black Lung Study Finds Biggest Cluster Ever Of Fatal Coal Miners' Disease
What mining coal does to your lungs:

Fossil Fuels and Anti-Democratic Politics: ALEC sponsors legislation to criminalize pipeline protests, and it's spreading

OHIO AND IOWA ARE THE LATEST OF EIGHT STATES TO CONSIDER ANTI-PROTEST BILLS AIMED AT PIPELINE OPPONENTS

Alleen Brown (The Intercept)

February 2 2018, 10:58 a.m. 

The bills were proposed less than a week after the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, which has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, finalized a model policy titled the “Critical Infrastructure Protection Act,” which calls for more severe punishment for those who trespass on facilities including oil pipelines, petroleum refineries, liquid natural gas terminals, and railroads used to transport oil and gas.

Ex-Military Men Offer Insightful Critiques of Permanent War and Generational War

We will be discussing the long (and ongoing war) in the MIddle East in coming days.  Here are two recent pieces by ex-military who dissect some of the many problems with these wars:

On how America's generals are still trying to re-fight the Vietnam War, in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Africa:

The War that Never Ends
by Major Danny Sjursen, is a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.

highlights:

"That war and its ill-fated lessons will undoubtedly continue to influence U.S. commanders until a new set of myths, explaining away a new set of failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, take over, possibly thanks to books by veterans of these conflicts about how Washington could have won the war on terror."

Our Enemy, Ourselves
by William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor, blogs at Bracing Views.

highlights:

"4. Generational wars -- ones, that is, that never end -- should not be considered a measure of American resolve, but of American stupidity.  If you wage war long, you wage it wrong, especially if you want to protect democratic institutions in this country."

In St Louis region, our coal-burning utility is polluting the air, and making bad asthma rates even worse: Ameren pollution making asthma worse?

Is Ameren pollution making asthma worse?

Report: Trump budget seeks 72% cut to DOE clean energy research

Report: Trump budget seeks 72% cut to DOE clean energy research

Former Massey CEO puts UBB blame on MSHA; outlines positions at campaign town hall

Former Massey CEO puts UBB blame on MSHA; outlines positions at campaign town hall

The Union of Concerned Scientists on Trump's State of the Union: The Values that Can Stop a Wrecking Ball Presidency

The Union of Concerned Scientists, more or less parallel to my comments in class.



State of the Union: The Values that Can Stop a Wrecking Ball Presidency

Big Oil displacing smaller frackers, now fracking at industrial scale. Not good news. Exxon plans fivefold rise in Permian Basin shale oil production

Exxon plans fivefold rise in Permian Basin shale oil production

Trump Says Climate Is Both ‘Cooling’ and ‘Heating.’ He’s Only Half Right.

Trump Says Climate Is Both ‘Cooling’ and ‘Heating.’ He’s Only Half Right.



Trump, I'm sorry to say, is a buffoon. 

Here is how the fossil fuel industry guts American democracy and the protection of health and environment: 66 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump

66 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump

Attacks Reveal What U.S. Won’t: Victory Remains Elusive in Afghanistan

For my students, for most of your life on this earth, we have been fighting, killing, and dying in Afghanistan.  This has everything to do with America's long war in the Middle East (Bacevich).  Which in turn has everything to do with the cycle of oil, militarism, and the fading imperial urge.



Attacks Reveal What U.S. Won’t: Victory Remains Elusive in Afghanistan

Two recent articles on the shale (fracking) oil boom, both saturated with fossil knowledge, not much critical insight

The Dark Side of America’s Rise to Oil Superpower  (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg's take, marginally better than that of the New York Times, here:

Oil Boom Gives the US a New Edge in Energy and Diplomacy (New York Times)

Source: Bloomberg - article here. 

Oil Boom Gives the U.S. a New Edge in Energy and Diplomacy

Lacks critical knowledge and critical insight -- merely cheerleading for the fossil fuel apparatus.  A "new edge" is nothing good if you only use it to continue in the wrong direction.  Little mention of war, health, or climate.   Notice how both the reporter and those interviewed are fixated on "price" - what Mitchell calls economic calculation.  Fossil knowledge at its best.



Oil Boom Gives the U.S. a New Edge in Energy and Diplomacy

10 Monkeys and a Beetle: Inside VW’s Campaign for ‘Clean Diesel’

10 Monkeys and a Beetle: Inside VW’s Campaign for ‘Clean Diesel’

We'll be talking offshore, oilspills, and shipping, and here's the Sanchi disaster: Why more people aren't talking about the Asian oil spill as big as Paris

Why more people aren't talking about the Asian oil spill as big as Paris

3 Strategies to Get to a Fossil-Free America

3 Strategies to Get to a Fossil-Free America



1.  Mobilize at local level of cities and states to move to renewables.



2.  Stop new fossil fuel infrastructure.



3.  Divest.

ABInBev To Attach 100% Renewable Electricity Label To Budweiser Beers

ABInBev To Attach 100% Renewable Electricity Label To Budweiser Beers

Trump issues 30% tariff on solar panel imports

Trump issues 30% tariff on solar panel imports



Helps understand how the tariff will hurt U.S. solar jobs, mostly in installation of imported panels.  Utility scale solar expected to fall 9%.

Trump Slaps Steep Tariffs on Imported Washing Machines and Solar Products

Trump Slaps Steep Tariffs on Imported Washing Machines and Solar Products

The Connection Between Mass Incarceration and Environmental Justice

The Connection Between Mass Incarceration and Environmental Justice

Prisons (and communities) near coal ash dumps have a higher likelihood of negative health impacts.

Read the report here: http://abolitionistlawcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/no-escape-3-3mb.pdf or click image below.

Should Seattle declare war on parking to fight climate change?

Should Seattle declare war on parking to fight climate change?



File under practical things that have to happen to address carbon emissions - here's the Seattle case:



A) Raise parking costs so that more people takes buses?

But that hurts low-wage workers who have to come to work before the busses start running.



B) Eliminate car access to downtown altogether?

But that gets the well-paid commuters upset.



C) B, paired with improved bus service?

Oslo Norway has done this successfully. (And they are much healthier than we are, due to biking and walking, even in the cold).



I'd say C.



Full story here:



Should Seattle declare war on parking to fight climate change?

2017 Was One of the Hottest Years on Record. And That Was Without El Niño.

As we discussed in class -- by any measure, the Earth is getting hotter, here's another graphic representation of that

2017 Was One of the Hottest Years on Record. And That Was Without El Niño. (via NYT)

Mozambique's Gas-Rich North Faces Specter of Further Attacks

Mozambique's Gas-Rich North Faces Specter of Further Attacks

He Leaked a Photo of Rick Perry Hugging a Coal Executive. Then He Lost His Job.

He Leaked a Photo of Rick Perry Hugging a Coal Executive. Then He Lost His Job.

Wastelands - A Mellon Sawyer Seminar | America, Energy and War

Wastelands - A Mellon Sawyer Seminar | America, Energy and War