The current crisis is a classic hit by economic hit men (EHM) - except this time, the victims are us.

Drawing on personal experiences described in his blockbuster books (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, The Secret History of the American Empire, and Hoodwinked), John Perkins explains how tools honed during the past four decades in developing countries are enabling the extremely rich to purchase businesses and real estate at fire sale prices; defend abolition of health care, education, and other social programs; and justify privatization of the public sector. However, crises offer opportunities.

Perkins presents a plan for transforming the economy and describes ways each of us can employ our individual passions and skills to not only prosper but also create a world we will be proud to pass on to future generations.

"We'll be the first to bring to the market a storage battery for home use, which can store sufficient electricity for about one week of use," said Fumio Otsubo, president of Panasonic, in a recent interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun.

Stressing that Panasonic and Sanyo have already test-manufactured a storage battery for home use, Otsubo said, "We're positioned closest [among firms] to realizing CO2 emission-free daily life."

By making Sanyo its subsidiary, Panasonic plans to accelerate the development of the storage battery, while planning to sell it together with a system that will enable households to check electricity usage on a home-based TV display

Read the whole article at http://www.physorg.com/news180778009.html

Study suggests that wind is ecologically and economically practical and could reduce CO2 emissions Cambridge, Mass. – September 10, 2009 – A team of environmental scientists from Harvard and Tsinghua University demonstrated the enormous potential for wind-generated electricity in China. Using extensive metrological data and incorporating the Chinese government's energy bidding and financial restrictions for delivering wind power, the researchers estimate that wind alone has the potential to meet the country's electricity demands projected for 2030.

The switch from coal and other fossil fuels to greener wind-based energy could also mitigate CO₂ emissions, thereby reducing pollution. The report appeared as a cover story in the September 11th issue of Science.

Twenty minutes per day of guided workplace meditation and yoga combined with six weekly group sessions can lower feelings of stress by more than 10 percent and improve sleep quality in sedentary office employees, a pilot study suggests.

The study offered participants a modified version of what is known as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a program established in 1979 to help hospital patients in Massachusetts assist in their own healing that is now in wide use around the world.

In the first study to look at what happens over the years to the billions of pounds of plastic waste floating in the world's oceans, scientists are reporting that plastics — reputed to be virtually indestructible — decompose with surprising speed and release potentially toxic substances into the water.

There are only months left to build a strong global climate treaty -- but some countries are putting its future in doubt.

Around the world a global movement is building to raise the bar of ambition ahead of the crucial climate negotiations in Copenhagen, 

December 2009. An immediate global outcry is needed to inject urgency into the process and to rescue the new treaty.

Add your name to the petition, and Avaaz will deliver it with stunts and meetings at key events prior to Copenhagen. 

Sign the Petition at Avaaz.org 

Dear leaders,

I call upon you, not as representatives of your countries, but as leaders of the world, to personally attend the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen this December.

Decisions which will be made at this meeting will impact the lives of everyone alive today, and determine the shape of humanity’s future.

This is the world’s best chance to avoid runaway climate change.

You owe it to the world to attend, to set aside your national interests, to safeguard our future, and to do what you were elected to do: lead.

My request is simple: promise now to personally attend.

Click on the image below to sign the petition at Greenpeace

It's summer - the perfect time for a little outdoor fun. Show your passion amongst the trees and you'll have the chance to be in a Greenpeace video to help protect our forests. So come on, spread a bit of forest love this summer

EU Petition

Over the last few months more than 125,000 of you wrote to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, asking for a strong timber law to put an end to deforestation and illegal logging. Thank you to everyone that took action!

Visit Greenpeace HERE

April 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Dutch town of Barendrecht has a message for Royal Dutch Shell Plc: Not under my backyard.

The oil company and the Netherlands government intend to build the first of a new generation of carbon-dioxide storage facilities in two depleted natural-gas fields in Barendrecht. The plan is to capture emissions from a gasification hydrogen plant at Shell’s nearby Pernis refinery and then store the CO2 more than a mile below area homes, preventing the greenhouse gas from reaching the air and harming the environment.

“I don’t think this is the solution to the CO2 problem,” said 53-year-old resident Gerard van Gils. “Why do a project in a residential area and not offshore? The atomic bomb wasn’t tested under Manhattan. To me this means: Not under my backyard.”

The Nitrogen Paradox

Nitrogen is one of the five major chemical elements that are necessary for life. While nitrogen is the most abundant of these, more than 99 percent of it occurs as molecular nitrogen, or N₂, which cannot be used by most organisms.  This is because breaking the triple bond holding the two nitrogen atoms together requires a large amount of energy, which can be mustered only through high-temperature processes or by a small number of nitrogen-fixing microbes.

Most living organisms can only make use of reactive nitrogen, which includes inorganic forms of nitrogen like ammonia, ammonium, nitrogen oxide, nitric acid, nitrous oxide, and nitrate, and organic compounds like urea, amines, proteins, and nucleic acids. It includes any nitrogen compound that is radiatively, chemically or biological active.

 nuke power bailout must NOT be part of the hundreds of billions of federal dollars about to pour out of Washington to revive our Bush-whacked economy.

If the huge Obama stimulus package we all know is coming includes money to build new reactors, the whole venture could turn to radioactive dust.

This is the last gasp both for American prosperity and atomic energy. Nuke promoters are lobbying frantically to get some of that cash for a dying business in which Wall Street would not invest even before the last crash.

In 2007 a national grassroots campaign, led in part by Nukefree.org, helped get a proposed $50 billion loan guarantee boondoggle removed from the Energy Bill. In 2008 a blank check was on its way just as Wall Street tanked.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is an innovative power generation system that uses the slight temperature difference between surface layer ocean water and deep ocean water.