EPA: Everybody Paid Already

I have written before about the stocking of Obama’s cabinet. But much to my post facto puzzlement, there was nothing in my In Come the Ghouls post about the EPA. How could I have skipped over Lisa Jackson and the nation’s leading federal eco-agency? No idea. Let’s remedy that now.
Let’s remember, Bush appointed Christine Todd [...]

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Eyes itch? Restless leg syndrome? Feeling like there’s some kind of invisible granular film between your soul and your computer screen? Odds are, you’re suffering from over-exposure to health care reform conversations.
Maybe you’re thinking about going for a forced death march from Selma to Montgomery to show those fatcat insurance companies what kind of public [...]

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RIP Ozone Hole

Remember the ozone hole? Many of our readers may be too young to recall the halcyon days when you didn’t have to feel guilty about your Aqua Net habit. We used to use these things called CFCs until it turned out they were causing the Earth’s protective ozone layer to be depleted. We signed the [...]

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The end of the world: George Will edition

I knew the end was coming soon (might already be here, in fact, Mayan calendar be damned) when I found myself agreeing with George Will. George Will! The notorious non-jeans-wearing global warming skeptic (if you missed that whole dust-up, the CJR has the scoop on it here – worth reading) who says the New Deal [...]

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Trucking into ‘09

Last year, we welcomed 2008 with a duo of posts. It was sort of an “eight wishes for ‘08″ theme. In the first, Kate linked to a great MSNBC video (surprisingly still up) about a woman who found a rock that she claimed looked like both George Washington and Jesus. It also had a link [...]

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It. Is. Hot.

When it’s hot, it’s easy to get grumpy. And since the Earth is currently warming at a rate 14,000 times faster than the natural rate, we can safely say that it is going to be hot for a while. August is pretty much just getting started people.
And since the hawt is here to stay, we [...]

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The War on Wind

Who knew that wind power was so subversive? Sure, those evil windmills were the arch-enemies of our boy from La Mancha. Sure, it has the potential to destroy those companies that utterly and totally had nothing to do with the unprovoked war that our nation just waged (is waging). But who knew that wind farms [...]

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The Offset

Regular readers of Toxic Culture may remember that we’re deeply skeptical of the carbon offset industry. That was one of our major objections to Fiji Water’s corporate reinvention (“Look! We’re green! Continue to pay through the nose for water that may be less safe than your tap water and is flown from thousands of miles [...]

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Let’s Refuel, America!

As the grotesque presidential pandering continues (Really? Carbon capture and sequestration? That’s your plan?), James Hansen (via Bill McKibben – really, you should read it) is doing his best Cassandra impression. But people still want cars. Lots of them.
Fortunately, the people who sell cars are eager to fill this need. On television last night [...]

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Don’t drink Fiji Water

The word for the day is “greenwashing.” Coined in the 1980s to describe the fusing between green branding and whitewashing as regards those little cards in hotel rooms encouraging you to hang up your towels to re-use them, it’s now so ingrained as to be maudlin even to mention. Of course Exxon wants to be [...]

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