2/29/2008
Teacher Fired
Published on Friday, February 29, 2008 by The San Francisco Chronicle
Quaker Teacher Fired For Changing Loyalty Oath
by Nanette Asimov
California State University East Bay has fired a math teacher after six weeks on the job because she inserted the word “nonviolently” in her state-required Oath of Allegiance form.
Marianne Kearney-Brown, a Quaker and graduate student who began teaching remedial math to undergrads Jan. 7, lost her $700-a-month part-time job after refusing to sign an 87-word Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution that the state requires of elected officials and public employees.
“I don’t think it was fair at all,” said Kearney-Brown. “All they care about is my name on an unaltered loyalty oath. They don’t care if I meant it, and it didn’t seem connected to the spirit of the oath. Nothing else mattered. My teaching didn’t matter. Nothing.”
A veteran public school math teacher who specializes in helping struggling students, Kearney-Brown, 50, had signed the oath before - but had modified it each time.
She signed the oath 15 years ago, when she taught eighth-grade math in Sonoma. And she signed it again when she began a 12-year stint in Vallejo high schools.
Each time, when asked to “swear (or affirm)” that she would “support and defend” the U.S. and state Constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Kearney-Brown inserted revisions: She wrote “nonviolently” in front of the word “support,” crossed out “swear,” and circled “affirm.” All were to conform with her Quaker beliefs, she said.
The school districts always accepted her modifications, Kearney-Brown said.
But Cal State East Bay wouldn’t, and she was fired on Thursday.
Modifying the oath “is very clearly not permissible,” the university’s attorney, Eunice Chan, said, citing various laws. “It’s an unfortunate situation. If she’d just signed the oath, the campus would have been more than willing to continue her employment.”
Modifying oaths is open to different legal interpretations. Without commenting on the specific situation, a spokesman for state Attorney General Jerry Brown said that “as a general matter, oaths may be modified to conform with individual values.” For example, court oaths may be modified so that atheists don’t have to refer to a deity, said spokesman Gareth Lacy.
Kearney-Brown said she could not sign an oath that, to her, suggested she was agreeing to take up arms in defense of the country.
“I honor the Constitution, and I support the Constitution,” she said. “But I want it on record that I defend it nonviolently.”
The trouble began Jan. 17, a little more than a week after she started teaching at the Hayward campus. Filling out her paperwork, she drew an asterisk on the oath next to the word “defend.” She wrote: “As long as it doesn’t require violence.”
The secretary showed the amended oath to a supervisor, who said it was unacceptable, Kearney-Brown recalled.
Shortly after receiving her first paycheck, Kearney-Brown was told to come back and sign the oath.
This time, Kearney-Brown inserted “nonviolently,” crossed out “swear,” and circled “affirm.”
That’s when the university sought legal advice.
“Based on the advice of counsel, we cannot permit attachments or addenda that are incompatible and inconsistent with the oath,” the campus’ human resources manager, JoAnne Hill, wrote to Kearney-Brown.
She cited a 1968 case called Smith vs. County Engineer of San Diego. In that suit, a state appellate court ruled that a man being considered for public employment could not amend the oath to declare: his “supreme allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ Whom Almighty God has appointed ruler of Nations, and expressing my dissent from the failure of the Constitution to recognize Christ and to acknowledge the Divine institution of civil government.”
The court called it “a gratuitous injection of the applicant’s religious beliefs into the governmental process.”
But Hill said Kearney-Brown could sign the oath and add a separate note to her personal file that expressed her views.
Kearney-Brown declined. “To me it just wasn’t the same. I take the oath seriously, and if I’m going to sign it, I’m going to do it nonviolently.”
Then came the warning.
“Please understand that this issue needs to be resolved no later than Friday, Feb. 22, 2008, or you will not be allowed to continue to work for the university,” Hill wrote.
The deadline was then extended to Wednesday and she was fired on Thursday.
“I was kind of stunned,” said Kearney-Brown, who is pursuing her master’s degree in math to earn the credentials to do exactly the job she is being fired from.
“I was born to do this,” she said. “I teach developmental math, the lowest level. The kids who are conditionally accepted to the university. Give me the kids who hate math - that’s what I want.”
© 2008 The San Francisco Chronicle
Quaker Teacher Fired For Changing Loyalty Oath
by Nanette Asimov
California State University East Bay has fired a math teacher after six weeks on the job because she inserted the word “nonviolently” in her state-required Oath of Allegiance form.
Marianne Kearney-Brown, a Quaker and graduate student who began teaching remedial math to undergrads Jan. 7, lost her $700-a-month part-time job after refusing to sign an 87-word Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution that the state requires of elected officials and public employees.
“I don’t think it was fair at all,” said Kearney-Brown. “All they care about is my name on an unaltered loyalty oath. They don’t care if I meant it, and it didn’t seem connected to the spirit of the oath. Nothing else mattered. My teaching didn’t matter. Nothing.”
A veteran public school math teacher who specializes in helping struggling students, Kearney-Brown, 50, had signed the oath before - but had modified it each time.
She signed the oath 15 years ago, when she taught eighth-grade math in Sonoma. And she signed it again when she began a 12-year stint in Vallejo high schools.
Each time, when asked to “swear (or affirm)” that she would “support and defend” the U.S. and state Constitutions “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Kearney-Brown inserted revisions: She wrote “nonviolently” in front of the word “support,” crossed out “swear,” and circled “affirm.” All were to conform with her Quaker beliefs, she said.
The school districts always accepted her modifications, Kearney-Brown said.
But Cal State East Bay wouldn’t, and she was fired on Thursday.
Modifying the oath “is very clearly not permissible,” the university’s attorney, Eunice Chan, said, citing various laws. “It’s an unfortunate situation. If she’d just signed the oath, the campus would have been more than willing to continue her employment.”
Modifying oaths is open to different legal interpretations. Without commenting on the specific situation, a spokesman for state Attorney General Jerry Brown said that “as a general matter, oaths may be modified to conform with individual values.” For example, court oaths may be modified so that atheists don’t have to refer to a deity, said spokesman Gareth Lacy.
Kearney-Brown said she could not sign an oath that, to her, suggested she was agreeing to take up arms in defense of the country.
“I honor the Constitution, and I support the Constitution,” she said. “But I want it on record that I defend it nonviolently.”
The trouble began Jan. 17, a little more than a week after she started teaching at the Hayward campus. Filling out her paperwork, she drew an asterisk on the oath next to the word “defend.” She wrote: “As long as it doesn’t require violence.”
The secretary showed the amended oath to a supervisor, who said it was unacceptable, Kearney-Brown recalled.
Shortly after receiving her first paycheck, Kearney-Brown was told to come back and sign the oath.
This time, Kearney-Brown inserted “nonviolently,” crossed out “swear,” and circled “affirm.”
That’s when the university sought legal advice.
“Based on the advice of counsel, we cannot permit attachments or addenda that are incompatible and inconsistent with the oath,” the campus’ human resources manager, JoAnne Hill, wrote to Kearney-Brown.
She cited a 1968 case called Smith vs. County Engineer of San Diego. In that suit, a state appellate court ruled that a man being considered for public employment could not amend the oath to declare: his “supreme allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ Whom Almighty God has appointed ruler of Nations, and expressing my dissent from the failure of the Constitution to recognize Christ and to acknowledge the Divine institution of civil government.”
The court called it “a gratuitous injection of the applicant’s religious beliefs into the governmental process.”
But Hill said Kearney-Brown could sign the oath and add a separate note to her personal file that expressed her views.
Kearney-Brown declined. “To me it just wasn’t the same. I take the oath seriously, and if I’m going to sign it, I’m going to do it nonviolently.”
Then came the warning.
“Please understand that this issue needs to be resolved no later than Friday, Feb. 22, 2008, or you will not be allowed to continue to work for the university,” Hill wrote.
The deadline was then extended to Wednesday and she was fired on Thursday.
“I was kind of stunned,” said Kearney-Brown, who is pursuing her master’s degree in math to earn the credentials to do exactly the job she is being fired from.
“I was born to do this,” she said. “I teach developmental math, the lowest level. The kids who are conditionally accepted to the university. Give me the kids who hate math - that’s what I want.”
© 2008 The San Francisco Chronicle
One In Each Hundred
[from Democracynow.org]
Record 1-in-100 Americans Behind Bars
A new report has found that a record 1-in-100 American adults are behind bars. According to the Pew Center, the prison population has grown by 25,000, even though the rate of violent crimes has decreased. 1-in-100 black women are jailed, compared to 1-in-350 white women. 1-in-36 Hispanic men and 1-in-15 black men are in jail or prison. The US has the highest rate of prisoners in the world, with more than 2.3 million people behind bars.
Record 1-in-100 Americans Behind Bars
A new report has found that a record 1-in-100 American adults are behind bars. According to the Pew Center, the prison population has grown by 25,000, even though the rate of violent crimes has decreased. 1-in-100 black women are jailed, compared to 1-in-350 white women. 1-in-36 Hispanic men and 1-in-15 black men are in jail or prison. The US has the highest rate of prisoners in the world, with more than 2.3 million people behind bars.
Good Quotes
If there’s a world here in a hundred years, it’s going to be saved by tens of millions of little things. The powers-that-be can break up any big thing they want. They can corrupt it or co-opt it from the inside, or they can attack it from the outside. But what are they going to do about 10 million little things? They break up two of them, and three more like them spring up! ~ Pete Seeger
[W]here industrial civilization degrades exactly those factors in its environment that support its existence, composting increases the factors in its environment that support its existence. ~ John Michael Greer
[W]here industrial civilization degrades exactly those factors in its environment that support its existence, composting increases the factors in its environment that support its existence. ~ John Michael Greer
Farming in Cities?
A FOOD CHAIN RELEASE FROM METROFARM.COM
Six decades ago, farms began leaving the city for greener pastures. Today they are returning. This leads us to ask: “Can farms and cities prosper together?”
This Saturday at 9am Pacific, the Food Chain with Michael Olson hosts Milwaukee’s Grow Urban and New York City’s Make Brooklyn Bloom farm conferences for a conversation about the efficacy of metropolitan agriculture.
Log on the Food Chain page at www.metrofarm.com to listen on your radio, computer or IPOD.
Topics include reasons why farms locate in or near a city; why cities tolerate the growth of crops in their midst; and whether farms and cities can indeed prosper together.
Question of the Week: Can farms and cities prosper together? (#579)
Six decades ago, farms began leaving the city for greener pastures. Today they are returning. This leads us to ask: “Can farms and cities prosper together?”
This Saturday at 9am Pacific, the Food Chain with Michael Olson hosts Milwaukee’s Grow Urban and New York City’s Make Brooklyn Bloom farm conferences for a conversation about the efficacy of metropolitan agriculture.
Log on the Food Chain page at www.metrofarm.com to listen on your radio, computer or IPOD.
Topics include reasons why farms locate in or near a city; why cities tolerate the growth of crops in their midst; and whether farms and cities can indeed prosper together.
Question of the Week: Can farms and cities prosper together? (#579)
2/27/2008
Falling Dollar
Dollar falls to record euro low
The dollar falls to a fresh record low against the euro due to renewed fears that the US may be facing recession.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/business/7265963.stm
The dollar falls to a fresh record low against the euro due to renewed fears that the US may be facing recession.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/business/7265963.stm
2/26/2008
Wheat Prices
Fresh records for price of wheat
Wheat prices set fresh records as concern grows about dwindling supplies of spring wheat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/business/7264239.stm
Wheat prices set fresh records as concern grows about dwindling supplies of spring wheat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/2/hi/business/7264239.stm
2/25/2008
No Security for Obama
Dallas Police Ordered to Stop Weapons Screening Obama Crowds
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022208E.shtml
Jack Douglas Jr., writing for Dallas Star-Telegram, reports, "Security details at Barack Obama's rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022208E.shtml
Jack Douglas Jr., writing for Dallas Star-Telegram, reports, "Security details at Barack Obama's rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena."
2/24/2008
What's Our Consumption Factor?
What's Your Consumption Factor?
By JARED DIAMOND
New York Times
January 2, 2008
To mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it's 2 raised to the
fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is
even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles
between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at
which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes
like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North
America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the
developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.
To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today,
there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to
around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many
people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing
humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume
and produce.
If most of the world's 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not
metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What
really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local
consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local
per capita consumption rate.
The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a
relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world's other
5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per
capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.
The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some
people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries
like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that's a big problem. Yes,
it is a problem for Kenya's more than 30 million people, but it's not a
burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their
relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that
each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10
times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more
resources than Kenya does.
People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita
consumption, although most of them couldn't specify that it's by a
factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be
hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become
terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it
has become clear that the oceans that once protected the United States
no longer do so. There will be more terrorist attacks against us and
Europe, and perhaps against Japan and Australia, as long as that
factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates persists.
People who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle.
Governments of developing countries make an increase in living standards
a primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of people in the
developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their own, by
emigrating, especially to the United States and Western Europe, Japan
and Australia. Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption
country raises world consumption rates, even though most immigrants
don't succeed immediately in multiplying their consumption by 32.
Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita
consumption rates at home, China stands out. It has the world's fastest
growing economy, and there are 1.3 billion Chinese, four times the
United States population. The world is already running out of resources,
and it will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level
consumption rates. Already, China is competing with us for oil and
metals on world markets.
Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below
ours, but let's suppose they rise to our level. Let's also make things
easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world
consumption - that is, no other country increases its consumption, all
national populations (including China's) remain unchanged and
immigration ceases. China's catching up alone would roughly double world
consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for
instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.
If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates
would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up,
world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world
population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption
rates).
Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion
people. But I haven't met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could
support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if
they will only adopt good policies - for example, institute honest
government and a free-market economy - they, too, will be able to enjoy
a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we
are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for
only one billion people.
We Americans may think of China's growing consumption as a problem. But
the Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have.
To tell them not to try would be futile.
The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept
is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal
around the world. But the world doesn't have enough resources to allow
for raising China's consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of
the world, to our levels. Does this mean we're headed for disaster?
No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on
consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels.
Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living
standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world.
Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have
lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.
Real sacrifice wouldn't be required, however, because living standards
are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption
is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For
example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of
ours, yet Western Europe's standard of living is higher by any
reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant
mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement,
vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask
yourself whether Americans' wasteful use of gasoline contributes
positively to any of those measures.
Other aspects of our consumption are wasteful, too. Most of the world's
fisheries are still operated non-sustainably, and many have already
collapsed or fallen to low yields - even though we know how to manage
them in such a way as to preserve the environment and the fish supply.
If we were to operate all fisheries sustainably, we could extract fish
from the oceans at maximum historical rates and carry on indefinitely.
The same is true of forests: we already know how to log them
sustainably, and if we did so worldwide, we could extract enough timber
to meet the world's wood and paper needs. Yet most forests are managed
non-sustainably, with decreasing yields.
Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we'll be
consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita
consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more
nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible
prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the
main thing lacking has been political will.
Fortunately, in the last year there have been encouraging signs.
Australia held a recent election in which a large majority of voters
reversed the head-in-the-sand political course their government had
followed for a decade; the new government immediately supported the
Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Also in the last year, concern about climate change has increased
greatly in the United States. Even in China, vigorous arguments about
environmental policy are taking place, and public protests recently
halted construction of a huge chemical plant near the center of Xiamen.
Hence I am cautiously optimistic. The world has serious consumption
problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.
Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California,
Los Angeles, is the author of "Collapse" and "Guns, Germs and Steel."
By JARED DIAMOND
New York Times
January 2, 2008
To mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it's 2 raised to the
fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is
even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles
between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at
which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes
like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North
America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the
developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.
To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today,
there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to
around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many
people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing
humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume
and produce.
If most of the world's 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not
metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What
really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local
consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local
per capita consumption rate.
The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a
relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world's other
5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per
capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.
The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some
people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries
like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that's a big problem. Yes,
it is a problem for Kenya's more than 30 million people, but it's not a
burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their
relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that
each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10
times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more
resources than Kenya does.
People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita
consumption, although most of them couldn't specify that it's by a
factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be
hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become
terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it
has become clear that the oceans that once protected the United States
no longer do so. There will be more terrorist attacks against us and
Europe, and perhaps against Japan and Australia, as long as that
factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates persists.
People who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle.
Governments of developing countries make an increase in living standards
a primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of people in the
developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their own, by
emigrating, especially to the United States and Western Europe, Japan
and Australia. Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption
country raises world consumption rates, even though most immigrants
don't succeed immediately in multiplying their consumption by 32.
Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita
consumption rates at home, China stands out. It has the world's fastest
growing economy, and there are 1.3 billion Chinese, four times the
United States population. The world is already running out of resources,
and it will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level
consumption rates. Already, China is competing with us for oil and
metals on world markets.
Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below
ours, but let's suppose they rise to our level. Let's also make things
easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world
consumption - that is, no other country increases its consumption, all
national populations (including China's) remain unchanged and
immigration ceases. China's catching up alone would roughly double world
consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for
instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.
If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates
would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up,
world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world
population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption
rates).
Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion
people. But I haven't met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could
support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if
they will only adopt good policies - for example, institute honest
government and a free-market economy - they, too, will be able to enjoy
a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we
are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for
only one billion people.
We Americans may think of China's growing consumption as a problem. But
the Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have.
To tell them not to try would be futile.
The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept
is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal
around the world. But the world doesn't have enough resources to allow
for raising China's consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of
the world, to our levels. Does this mean we're headed for disaster?
No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on
consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels.
Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living
standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world.
Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have
lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.
Real sacrifice wouldn't be required, however, because living standards
are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption
is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For
example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of
ours, yet Western Europe's standard of living is higher by any
reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant
mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement,
vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask
yourself whether Americans' wasteful use of gasoline contributes
positively to any of those measures.
Other aspects of our consumption are wasteful, too. Most of the world's
fisheries are still operated non-sustainably, and many have already
collapsed or fallen to low yields - even though we know how to manage
them in such a way as to preserve the environment and the fish supply.
If we were to operate all fisheries sustainably, we could extract fish
from the oceans at maximum historical rates and carry on indefinitely.
The same is true of forests: we already know how to log them
sustainably, and if we did so worldwide, we could extract enough timber
to meet the world's wood and paper needs. Yet most forests are managed
non-sustainably, with decreasing yields.
Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we'll be
consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita
consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more
nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible
prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the
main thing lacking has been political will.
Fortunately, in the last year there have been encouraging signs.
Australia held a recent election in which a large majority of voters
reversed the head-in-the-sand political course their government had
followed for a decade; the new government immediately supported the
Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Also in the last year, concern about climate change has increased
greatly in the United States. Even in China, vigorous arguments about
environmental policy are taking place, and public protests recently
halted construction of a huge chemical plant near the center of Xiamen.
Hence I am cautiously optimistic. The world has serious consumption
problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.
Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California,
Los Angeles, is the author of "Collapse" and "Guns, Germs and Steel."
2/23/2008
McCain Scores Flat Zero
http://lcv.org/scorecard/
McCain's score is lower even than Elizabeth Dole's (7%).
McCain's score is lower even than Elizabeth Dole's (7%).
2/22/2008
Xeriscape Plant Program, Pinehurst, Feb. 23
Saturday, Feb. 23
Drought-tolerant Plants
10:30
Pinehurst Town Hall
Drought-tolerant Plants
10:30
Pinehurst Town Hall
Consumer-based Carbon Tax
British Columbia Introduces Carbon Tax
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/022108EA.shtml
Jonathan Fowlie and Fiona Anderson, The Vancouver Sun, report, "Driving and other fuel-dependent activities are about to get more expensive as British Columbia becomes the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a consumer-based carbon tax."
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/022108EA.shtml
Jonathan Fowlie and Fiona Anderson, The Vancouver Sun, report, "Driving and other fuel-dependent activities are about to get more expensive as British Columbia becomes the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a consumer-based carbon tax."
2/21/2008
Concert, Aberdeen, Feb. 23
We celebrated President’s Day this week, another fine example of multitasking. They were both so venerable as to deserve a day of commemoration; why not combine it and smack it on a weekend ? No need to examine the reason for the holiday, just hit the sales and stimulate the economy. Delving into our history just a little would bring to your attention a book that brings new material about Abraham Lincoln and the life of a President during war time. It is timely because the extensive renovation of the Soldier’s Home is now complete. The project began during the Clinton administration when the property was declared a national monument. The cottage, if you can imagine a 38 room cottage, offered the Lincolns a respite from the heat, political, as well as climatic , of summer time Washington. “Lincoln’s Other White House” is available from your favorite local book store.
Continuing our agenda of stories and songs, there is one great song writer visiting Aberdeen this Saturday. We hope you’ll join us downtown to hear Pierce Pettis. Doors open at 7:15, the show starts at 8. $12 admission, $10. for members, $5. for well behaved children under 12.
Continuing our agenda of stories and songs, there is one great song writer visiting Aberdeen this Saturday. We hope you’ll join us downtown to hear Pierce Pettis. Doors open at 7:15, the show starts at 8. $12 admission, $10. for members, $5. for well behaved children under 12.
2/20/2008
2/19/2008
Honey Bees, Ice Cream
http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/17/news/companies/bees_icecream/index.htm?postversion=2008021712
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