How Sweden turns its trash into gold

I would have thought that other countries would have followed Sweden's example from back in the 1970s. But, no.

The United States government is far too under the thumb of big business to do this, which is rather bizarre. I say that because being truly "green", instead of "greenwashing" is actually a great business strategy. Not only is it good for the environment, but it is also good for the bottom line.

Toss in things like recycling electronics is something which business is SUPPOSED to do, but it doesn't.

Maybe they think all the heavy metals out there in the environment making people dumber is a good thing.

Why I went Green (and sort of silent on Guns)

“There was once a big atomic bomb
That wanted to be a bullet.
His friends all asked why, when he was such a big atomic bomb, he would want to be a tiny bullet.
"I miss", he sighed, "the personal touch.”
-- Tuli Kupferberg

I've kind of gone silent on the topic of guns since, like the above passage, climate change is something which affects us all. Sure, guns are bad, but the coming crisis makes the gun debate in the US look tame.

Climate change is happening. It's undeniable (if you are not totally out of touch with reality). And it will require cultural as well as political changes.

It's also long overdue that people start addressing it. We shouldn't have needed Greta Thurnberg.

The United Nations has estimated that we need to reduce carbon emissions by half within a decade to have a 50% chance of avoiding global catastrophe. Of course, this is likely to be an underestimation as recent science shows permafrost melting 90 years earlier than forecast and Himalayan glaciers melting twice as fast as expected. Feedbacks and locked in heating will take us over 2C even before we factor in additional temperature rises from human caused emissions over the next ten years.

In short, we're fucked


George Monbiot says:

A paper published in Nature shows that we have little chance of preventing more than 1.5C of global heating unless existing fossil fuel infrastructure is retired. Instead the industry intends to accelerate production, spending nearly $5tn in the next 10 years on developing new reserves. It is committed to ecocide.
But the biggest and most successful lie it tells is this: that the first great extermination is a matter of consumer choice. In response to the Guardian’s questions, some of the oil companies argued that they are not responsible for our decisions to use their products. But we are embedded in a system of their creation – a political, economic and physical infrastructure that creates an illusion of choice while, in reality, closing it down.

Sure, people can try to say that this is "liberal nonsense", but climate change has been on the radars since physicist Edward Teller told the American Petroleum Institute (API) back in 1959 that a 10% increase in CO2 will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. “I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.”

Lyndon Johnson’s President’s Science Advisory Committee states that “pollutants have altered on a global scale the carbon dioxide content of the air”, with effects that “could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings”. Summarising the findings, the head of the API warned the industry: “Time is running out.”

A confidential report prepared for Shell’s environmental conservation committee in 1988 found that CO2 could raise temperatures by 1C to 2C over the next 40 years with changes that may be “the greatest in recorded history”. It urged rapid action by the energy industry, “By the time the global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even stabilise the situation.” 

Instead of addressing the issue in the past sixty years, people have been heading full tilt on the road to disaster. It would have been far easier to have addressed this issue early on than to wait until the house has almost burned down.

Anyway, I am more interested in addressing climate change than in wasting time on trying to impeach Trump. This issue requires cultural and political change. I've made as many of those changes as I can, but others need to catch on.

The ecological and climate crisis is not be owned by any political ideology, culture, age or gender.  We ALL need to take action on this pressing issue.

Is the NRA really pro-hunter?

OK, I am politically green.  In other words, if I go for a single issue:  it's the environment.  I have been active in environmentalism since I was a kid.  I love the outdoors, but does the NRA really love the outdoors as much as they claim?

The National Rifle Association has long claimed to represent America’s hunters and shooters in the fight to protect one of America’s oldest traditions as the self-proclaimed "largest pro-hunting organization in the world"  The NRA’s bylaws even include an article setting a core goal "to promote and defend hunting…as a viable and necessary method of fostering the propagation, growth and conservation…of our renewable wildlife resources". But it turns out that its by-laws are just empty rhetoric.

A report by the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA) showed that  the NRA gave much more money to and gave much higher ratings to politicians who:

• In 2001, opposed the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which was defeated even though it would have protected millions of acres of our best hunting land.
• In 2005, tried to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public land to “corporate interests at prices far below market value,” as stated in the report. “While conservation groups across America came out against the (sale of public land), the NRA stayed silent.”
• In 2007, opposed the so-called “Katrina Amendment” proposed to prevent future catastrophic flooding and protect wetlands and wildlife habitat threatened by climate change.

An annual survey conducted by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is the best source we have to judge the NRA's political leanings   It was the primarily source used by ASHA to come to its conclusions. On the front page of the report, in fact, AHSA states that the NRA gave campaign contributions to 52 of the 53 members of Congress who received a zero rating from LCV for their conservation voting records. 

Two new reports published from the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Gun Truth Project and Corporate Accountability International, show that the NRA following contributions from oil and gas companies, the NRA lent its support to legislation that would open up more federal public lands to fossil-fuel extraction, compromising the wilderness that many hunters value.

In 2012, six oil and gas companies contributed a total of between $1.3 million and $5.6 million to the NRA, according to CAP. (The companies are Clayton Williams Energy, J.L. Davis Gas Consulting, Kamps Propane, Barrett Brothers Oil and Gas, Saulsbury Energy Services, and KS Industries.)

The NRA's heftiest energy contributor by far is Clayton Williams Energy. CWE is the NRA's largest corporate donor outside of the firearm industry, and one of its six largest overall donors. The publicly owned Texas energy company has donated no less than $2 million to the NRA in the past four years: at least $1 million in 2010, according to an SEC filing, and at least $1 million in 2012, according to the NRA. In 2010, CEO, president, director, and board chairman Clayton Williams Jr. told a meeting of oil drillers that he'd given more than $3 million to the NRA. In 2013, Williams and his wife Modesta were inducted into the NRA's Golden Ring of Freedom, a small circle of major donors. The couple was celebrated in a 10-page feature story in a 2011 issue of the NRA's Ring of Freedom magazine.

The reality is that the NRA is out of line with America’s dedicated conservation organizations.  The nation’s biggest gun lobby gave $4,085,277 to support the 193 members of Congress who received poor conservation ratings from the LCV and only $390,897, 10 times less, to the 245 members of Congress who have received high conservation ratings.

Additionally,  the NRA's lobbying on bills detrimental to the environment contradicts the express commitment of of its lobbying arm to "be involved in any issue that directly or indirectly affects firearms ownership and use. These involve such topics as hunting and access to hunting lands [and] wilderness and wildlife conservation." CAP's report also cites several polls showing that preservation of wildlife is important to most sportsmen: A 2012 poll found that two-thirds of sportsmen want to maintain current conservation levels and oppose "allowing private companies to develop public lands when it would limit the public's enjoyment of—or access to—these lands."

Additionally, a 2013 survey of hunters and anglers, nearly 75 percent of respondents opposed selling public lands to help reduce the deficit.  On the other hand, there is a big push to sell public lands from the Libertarian segment of the republican party.

It would seem that the NRA is working against the interest of hunters and sportsmens despite its by-laws to the contrary.   In fact, I would say that the NRA works against the interests of responsible gun owners--if there are still very many left.

Actually, I haven't seen the NRA point to any actual legislation they have supported which would give any credence to their claim of being "pro-conservation".   In fact, I have seen more destruction of the US countryside in the past 40 odd years.  It seems to me that if the NRA were as "pro-environment" as it is "pro-gun" that there wouldn't be a problem with development and the US would not have decaying cities in the same way that guns have become an epidemic health crisis.

Sources:

• The Anti-Conservation Mission of the NRA
• Oil and Gas Industry Influence in the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International 
• Is Oil Money Turning the NRA Against Hunters?
• NRA Leadership Still Selling Hunters Down the River: New NRA Grades Show They Support Members Who Support a Radical Anti-Conservation Agenda