We are at the stage where we are dealing with Congressmen bringing snowballs into Congress to prove there is no climate change. 1100 people die from heat in India, in the Spring. Texas is flooded but they are worried about Obama declaring Marshall Law and taking their guns away. Maybe when Rush Limbaughs Palm Beach island is underwater they will think about it.

Pizza was made by skilled workers. No skill, no product.

The fundamental reason capitalism threatens the biosphere isn't tied specifically to fossil fuels. It's rooted in the system's very nature.

Capitalist enterprises survive by enlarging capital with surplus value. This value is created in the process of using labor to add value to commodities by transforming them. So, the continued functioning of the system depends on the progressive transformation of more and more of nature into synthetic forms, at a pace determined not by human needs or environmental sustainability, but solely by the need of capital for profitability. Carbon pollution is just one by-product of this general process.

P.S. Please don't use that verbal monstrosity, socioeconomic. What you're talking about is class, so say class. It's not a dirty word.

c-8; human history - a million? hardly, no documentation. all guesswork. Last 6000 years has been all documented with facts. But only 6000 years and look what we've done to this planet.
karagirl; excellent insight. Unfortunately, with greed and power controlling the human mind, a healthy earth and a peaceful mind will not be seen again till JESUS returns for those who want HIS kind of life and world.

AIW -- First of all I appreciate that you respond to my blogs with valid comments. My main critique of you, Loren and others on this blog is that you let the perfect attack the good.

Obama's declassifying the economic stats of the top 400 earners tells me he is not a complete fascist. I do not see how Obama could have ever got the public option in the ACA no matter how much he tried. Lieberman was dead set against. Also, Obama did not see the need to put as much effort as you would have liked into the public option. At that point, he was still delusional about getting co-operation from the repugs.

I did not vote for Obama in 2008 primary in CA; I voted for John Edwards.

The greatest saviour of USA so far, IMO, is FDR. He not only kissed up to Big Money, he was Big Money. In that vein, I think Eliot Spitzer was our best hope. The repugs violating the "guy code" seems to be their most effective weapon.

Capitalism by its very nature must consume. Be it built in obsolescence, manipulating "demand" by creating "want" or "desire" through adverstising and marketing or causing social upheavels and wars to force open markets or to acquire certain assets that cannot be acquired otherwise. Capitalism doesn't see beyond its immediate satisfaction. That's always left to the future to deal with. Nevertheless, once it is unable to consume, it will die in spasms.

Yes, especially if they can find a way to get the public taxpayer to pay for it! Actually, I'm kidding, but I seriously doubt the controlling elite which run our oligarchy we call the federal government wouldn't try to find a find for the public to pick up the tab ust as they have so many times already.

I think that dirtman 2 has some valid points, but Im sure thom would agree that, by and large the stage of the industrial revolution in which burning fossil fuels to help better the economy and not just the middle class but every class aside from the super rich is over, and has been for a long time. We have now moved into a dark phase where their is a complete disreguard, buy carbon burning for profit corporations, for not only the environment in which we all live, but the general overall health of we the people that live in this said environment. We now live in an era where big oil and coal and natural gas corps. Would rather lie about the environment, and lie to us citizens about the health risks of pollution and global warming so that they can turn a higher profit, rather than invest in cleaner air. We now live in a world where the bottom line is more important than pollution and our national Parks, more important than protecting endangered species, more important than our planets rain forests, more important than keeping our oceans pollution free. More important than keeping our air clean, more important than keeping our working class coal miners safe, more important than installing safty measures on our off shore oil rigs to make sure that if an accident happens oil doesn't just shoot out of the bottom of the ocean to contaminate hundreds of millions of gallons of sea water and leave "underwater oil plumes" that are miles long and hundreds if not thousands of feet high in the gulf of Mexico to float around freely and kill our underwater foodsources at will, and at an alarming rate. Killing the Fido plankton to, one of the cornerstones of life and nutrition as we know it in the ocean and on the face of the earth. Did I mention that it's bad for the f****n air we breath. What about the pollution that companies are allowed to dump into our streams, as long as they arnt a certain size, that of which being anything large enough to put an industrial water craft on. So rivers like the Mississippi are out, the Colorado, and Arkansas, but all the smaller streams and rivers that lead into them are not protected.

I could go on and on. Being a native coloradoin, I've worked with environment Colorado and other political nonprofit organizations to combat this social and economic evil that has our country in it's grips. We need to Take our country and frankly our world back. This is not a joke, this is not something that can be put off. Prifitization over human well-being is now the standard by which corporations like Exxon and shell, BP and Xcel energy just to name a few, live by. My biggest question at this point is, what the hell is wrong with these people, when it all comes crashing down, when the temperature gets to high globally, and mother nature takes over and wipes us out, or what happens when all the life in the sea starts to die and thus not provide us a healthy foodsource, when breathing our air becomes the equivalent of smoking a pack or more of cigarettes a day, just like Mexico city, which buy the way has been that way for a very long time now, and Im sure lots more places around the world are to, when???? When are they going to realise that they live hear to?? That in the end profit won't matter. In the end when it's all dark, when their is nothing left, when even they are doomed in their little underground pods that they think will sustain them. When?? When are they finally gonna realize they were wrong? When are they going to finally say; Im sorry........

Everyone who is objecting to Richard is complaining about LWRs. Does anyone know anything about LFTRs (I don't)?

I agree with many of the points and corporate degradation of the environment has gone on for a long time but with new environmental laws some has been limited and removed. Among the many good points are also some exaggerations were made. Through the industrial revolution the greatest wealth for society was created with America being the richest nation in the world with a large middle class. They have benefited through jobs provided by companies that were using or producing the carbon energy. The key to changing from a worldwide use of carbon based energy is to allow free enterprise with governmental controls to transition from carbon to renewable energy over a period of time. We also have to be concerned about a government "out of control" as much environmental damage was done constructing dams on beautiful rivers throughout the West. Many with limited value. Whatever steps are taken must not destroy the American economy which not only is good for Americans but the world.

I think it should be called Green "New Deal"

You told a woman caller that to add some information, that she could put her comment on your daily blog...............so here goes. You almost got the Chaney/Dresser connection correct, but you failed to insert the BUSH connection. Prescott, a long time board member of Dresser Industries left Dresser to run for congress in the state of Connecticut. However, he carried with him a large fortune from his 20 plus years on the board. When Prescott died, (he is the one doing business with Germany pre WW2) the Bush family inherited the fortune. While VP, George H.W. Bush learned of the asbestos threat to Dresser, where their family fortune was tied up with Dresser stock, so when he became president, he appointed Cheney Secretary of defense. As Sec. Def, Cheney handed Halliburton large Gulf War 1 contracts, setting himself up to become HAL CEO at the end of the Bush 1 term. As CEO of HAL, Cheney arranges to buy Dresser, an old competitor, practically bankrupting HAL, so when Cheney became VP, he made up for this BUSH SAVE by handing our tax payer dollars to HAL in Gulf War 2. Has all of this been behind the permitting of 911?