Newtown grafitti/CC BY 2.0In a historic vote Wednesday, the L.A. City Council voted overwhelmingly to enact a ban on plastic bags -- becoming the largest city in the United States to push towards more eco-friendly alternatives.Under the measure, passed by a 13 to 1 vote, stores throughout L.A. will be required to phase out the bags by the end of the year, significantly reducing the amount of landfill fodder and environmental pollutants produced annually. Once in effect, the ban is set to keep the whopping 2.7 billion plastic bags used each year from ending up in the trash -- or worse, littering the city's streets and waterways."This day has been a long time in coming," says councilman Paul Koretz, an early supporter of the ban. ... Continue reading →
Ashish Gautamm/CC BY 2.0Six months into 2012 there have already been more than double the number of tigers killed in India as we killed in all of last year. Of the 14 confirmed tigers killed this year, 8 of them have been in the state of Maharashtra. Which leads us directly to this, via The Guardian:The government in Maharashtra says injuring or killing suspected poachers will no longer be considered a crime. Forest guards should not be "booked for human rights violations when they have taken action against poachers", the Maharashtra forest minister, Patangrao Kadam, said on Tuesday. The state will also send more rangers and jeeps into forests, and will offer secret payments to informers who give tips about poachers and animal smugglers, he ... Continue reading →
Foot Power, Rio Beckons, Congress to Navy: Screw National Security, Burn Oil You sunk my (green) battleship!: The U.S. military has been a leader in the development of cleaner fuel sources in recent years -- in part because the top brass know that using less oil is smart for our national security. The Navy was all prepared for a two-day experiment running an aircraft carrier’s entire battlegroup on biofuels -- until the House Armed Services Committee stepped in last week and told the Pentagon: cut it out you hippies! Keep using fossil fuels instead, because that’s who’s funding our re-election campaigns. (OK, they didn’t say that last part, but you know it’s the reason.) SlateDenial for dollars: Who’s picking up the tab for the groups ... Continue reading →
Jon Rawlinson/CC BY 2.0Cocos Island, Costa Rica.TicoTimes is reporting an intriguing, if entirely unexpected and rather bizarre, possibility in the case of Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson, now released on bail in Germany as extradition proceedings continue.In Costa Rica the Environment Minister and Foreign Minister met with local environmental groups, as a well as Sea Shepherd's director of operations in the Galapagos Islands.Environment Minister René Castro:Captain Alex Cornelissen of Sea Shepherd contacted us via Costa Rican nongovernmental organizations including Pretoma to discuss the offer that Captain Watson could come voluntarily to the country to restart joint programs between Sea Shepherd and the Costa Rican government that were suspended a decade ago. The idea is to cooperate in the creations of the international biological corridors, as ... Continue reading →
Biking Kenowa Hills seniors punished: woodtv.comWho Knew Biking to School Could be Considered a Prank? On the second to last day of school, 60 seniors from Kenowa Hills High School in Walker, Michigan, rode their bikes to school. It wasn't an improvised things either, as they had police escort and did it safely, and even the mayor joined them (handing out donuts, which isn't exactly health food, but nobody was forced to eat them). But their principal, out of some sort of "I'll show you who's boss" primal instinct, decided to reprimand them, calling the bike ride a "prank", going as far as suspending them from a traditional year's end celebration at that school.But calling this a prank is taking the "letter of the law" ... Continue reading →
Heartland Institute/Promo imageIt's been a rough couple of months for the Heartland Institute, the nation's top climate change-denying think tank. First, the climate researcher Peter Gleick indulged in a sneaky bit of espionage to snag the group's confidential budget and other internal documents, which he promptly released to the public.After those docs revealed that Heartland was backed by some pretty mainstream corporations and that it was planning to lobby to change public school curricula to discount climate science, controversy ensued. A couple major donors, including General Motors, jumped ship, and an acrimonious war of words took place between Heartland and the climate activist community. A group called Forecast the Facts, led by campaign director Brad Johnson, stepped up the pressure on companies that remained.Then, just ... Continue reading →
The military has used music to project pomp and boost morale since the American Revolution. Yet with American soldiers scattered across the globe, the days of marching bands following the troops into battle are all but over. As one of the authors of a new Army band field manual told the New York Times, "If it can't fit into two Blackhawks, it's not going to happen." That means deploying some of the 4,600 members of the more than 100 Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard bands to perform in "popular music elements" or "music support teams"—what civilians know as rock bands. There are no fewer than two dozen official Army rock bands, with names like Show of Force, Gunpowder and Lead, Down Range, Night ... Continue reading →
“What do you think this is about?” was the question that bounced back when I asked the same of Sruly, a smiling, bespectacled twenty-something Hasidic student and erstwhile packer and shipper from Williamsburg. We were on the G train, on our way to what may have been the largest “anti-Internet” rally in history. It wasn’t hard to detect some of Sruly’s concerned self-awareness, about the way the asifa, organized by Ichud HaKehillos LeTohar HaMachane, or the Unification of the Communities for the Purification of the Camp, had been portrayed in the media: as a backwards rally against the future, a farcical and confused debate over an unavoidable technology, a sign of the olden days’ fear of the new, a call to put an end to ... Continue reading →
