The Obama administration claims to be concerned about the environment. One need only look at its commitment to green energy subsidies to understand how totally serious they are about taking care of the world in which we all live.

This commitment to the environment is one of the president’s most defining qualities. That’s why I was shocked to learn that the president is seeking to prop up an industry that is directly responsible for devastating environmental impact.

President Obama on Monday unveiled a plan to save the U.S. Postal Service and its employees from insolvency — a plan that includes the possible end of Saturday mail service.

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Tags: environment & nature, politics & government by Ricky Sprague
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As the proprietor of When Falls the Coliseum, I receive lots of press releases. I usually decline to write about the announcements sent to me, but I have decided to reproduce this one in full below. This is not a demonstration of my awesome satire-writing skills. This is an actual press release. I haven’t changed a word.

The subject line of the e-mail I received: “Celebrity Activists to Save the Ocean!” [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature by Scott Stein
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How could ANYONE or indeed ANYTHING possibly go out of business just after a straight cash infusion of a half a billion dollars? Somehow Solyndra has managed it. This middle-sized firm with the maudlin name was never Too Big To Fail in its own right but it is exemplary. Solyndra is a “Green” business. You know that. And “Green” is the economic future. Green is clean. Green is keen. Green is nice, unlike those nasty cro-magnon energies like oil, gas and nukes. Even hydro power is in an infamous stink. That’s something of a puzzler, isn’t it? What could be cleaner than washing the whole landscape with cool, fresh creek water? As with so many of our current misapprehensions we suffer from Humpty-Dumpty-itis. Which is to say that the words you are hearing, Alice, do not mean what you presume they mean. Indeed, they are subject to revision or even flat inversion opportunistically by the eggshell sophists. In such an environment your most basic presumptions will fail you.

The bugaboo with this stuff is always CO2, carbon-dioxide. You are sitting in a vile cloud of it right now. Wait! Don’t go fleeing into the street. Out there is a dose of carbon-monoxide! Not an improvement and in any case the CO2 is everywhere on earth; a disgusting state of affairs. Most sadly its source, among others, is your two little nostrils. You breathe in 300-odd parts per million of this toxin and breathe out considerably more. This, the Green Advocates seek to stop. And so they should. A shocked humanity gazes in horror at its exhalations and wonders, what is this poison and how did it get inside my lungs? Was it Monsanto? Dow-Corning or Dow-Jones? Ah, it was Archer-Daniels, wasn’t it? Perhaps a blanket ban on hyphens would solve our crisis. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, money by Ken Watson
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Tags: environment & nature, money, politics & government, technology by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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The other night I was working in my backyard when I caught a whiff of smoke on the wind: a barbecue? I wondered. But there were no smoke trails coming from behind my neighbor’s fences; nor could I smell sizzling meat.

I checked the green belt behind my house- no tongues of flame there either. Furthermore, the odor was different, not a wood fire, but rather…. Ah that’s it! It was the same burning plastic/chemical/metal aroma that had hovered over my Austin apartment last year after an angry man had flown a plane into the local tax office, hoping to inflict a mini 9/11 on the IRS (He got there too early, before most of the staff were at their desks, and so killed only himself and one other person). [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Even as we experience one of the worst droughts in Texas’ recorded history, our television sets and desktop news feeds are filled with words and images of the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Irene. I realize that many WFTC contributors are based somewhere in the storm’s path … our thoughts and our prayers are with you, and with all those in harm’s way. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature by Jeff McDonald
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10. “It’s so hot, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s having an affair with the counter lady at Baskin-Robbins.”

9. “It’s so hot, Dick Cheney was caught waterboarding himself.”

8. “It’s so hot, street people are making their own gravy.”

7. “It’s so hot, Charlie Sheen tested positive for Slurpees.”

6. “It’s so hot, I saw an Amish guy buying an air conditioner.”

5. “It’s so hot, former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn said he was looking forward to spending some time in the cooler.”

4. “It’s so hot, chickens are laying omelets.”

3. “It’s so hot, my car’s GPS lady keeps directing me towards Canada.”

2. “It’s so hot, Hillary Clinton’s been wearing her pantsuit without the pants.”

1. “It’s so hot, Anthony Weiner actually appreciates his wife giving him the cold shoulder.”

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, environment & nature by Bob Sullivan
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Recently, presidential candidate Rick Perry claimed to be skeptical of man-made climate change.

Now, as if on cue, some people at an institution called Pennsylvania State University have come up with a very serious reason for human beings to fear climate change, and their role in it.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.

This is ridiculous. We all know that we have much more to fear from Sasquatches (“Squatches”), Chupacabras (“Chuppies”), Loch Ness Monsters (“Nessies”), and Moth Men (“Mothies”) than we do from extraterrestrials. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, politics & government by Ricky Sprague
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When I was young, droughts were something that happened elsewhere: as a punishment from God in the Bible, or in far off Africa, where unfortunate babies with distended bellies would die in the scorching heat of an evil sun. In Scotland, by contrast, there was never a shortage of rain – quite the opposite, in fact: We hardly ever saw the sun, and might have thought its existence a mere rumor were it not for those people who came back from holidays in Spain burnt red, toy donkeys under their arms.

Flash forward a few decades and suddenly I find myself living in Texas where droughts are a regular occurrence. Currently we are enduring our ninth month of epic dryness, my second drought in five years, which – depending on which website I consult – is either the worst or third worst in the history of the state. [Read more →]

Tags: environment & nature, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Tags: environment & nature, politics & government by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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