Campact: "Should the EU and Canada sign the CETA treaty, it threatens to turn democracy into a pawn in the games of multinational corporations: Companies could sue states via their Canadian subsidiaries when public policies lead to a reduction of their profits. Private arbitration panels, operating behind closed doors, could award billions in compensation to corporations – to be paid for by taxpayers’ money.
Signing CETA would pave the way for the TTIP agreement between the EU and the US to enter through the back door. Both agreements threaten to weaken existing laws that restrict the use of genetic engineering in agriculture or prevent the contamination of drinking water through fracking. Privatisation of public services would no longer be reversible."
MotherJones: "New science shows that thanks to methane leaks, gas won't work as a 'bridge fuel'.
Carbon dioxide—CO2, the molecule produced when we burn fossil fuels—traps heat in the atmosphere, causing much of the climate change we see around us. The reason President Obama likes gas more than coal is because it produces half as much carbon dioxide when you burn it.
But CO2 is not the only molecule that plays this trick. Methane—CH4—is a rarer gas, but it's even more effective at trapping heat. And methane is another word for natural gas. So: When you frack, some of that gas leaks out into the atmosphere. If enough of it leaks out before you can get it to a power plant and burn it, then it's no better, in climate terms, than burning coal. If enough of it leaks, America's substitution of gas for coal is in fact not slowing global warming.
In the official Obama story (one being echoed in Hillary Clinton's climate talking points), natural gas is a "bridge" to a world of solar and wind power, which isn't quite ready yet. But in fact, in just the same years that we've learned to frack we've also learned an awful lot about how to scale up wind and sun. And that means that far from being a bridge, the big investments in natural gas may actually be a breakwater that keeps this new wave of truly clean energy from washing onto our shores.
It turns out, in other words, that there's no easy bridge to a working climate future—no way to avoid angering powerful interests, no way to put off actually building the clean energy we desperately need. It's time to stop searching for a bridge and simply take the leap."
FAIR: "But the most important issue is one that goes entirely unmentioned in the piece: climate change. If you recognize that the planet faces a profound climate crisis, then any kind of new fossil fuel extraction–be it oil or fracked natural gas–presents a fundamental step in the wrong direction. And the evidence is that methane emissions related to fracking could be as bad–or worse–for the atmosphere than burning coal."
DeWereldMorgen: "Sinds de komst van de mens sterven diersoorten duizend keer sneller uit dan voorheen. Tot die onthutsende vaststelling komen Amerikaanse wetenschappers. De mens zet een uitstervingsgolf in gang die vergelijkbaar is met die van de dinosauriërs, waarschuwen ze."
En ook Nederland moddert lekker rustig verder. Respect voor alles wat leeft is ver te zoeken.
FTM: "Dierenwelzijn: 2,7 miljard overtredingen per jaar en nog geen 100 boetes
Het aantal wetsovertredingen tegen dieren in Nederlandse vleesindustrie is volgens columnist Hans Baaij verbijsterend, toch wordt er amper tegen opgetreden. Met dank aan de Nederlandse overheid.
Begin dit jaar verscheen een rapport van Dier&Recht/Varkens in Nood over het grote aantal overtredingen in de vee-industrie. De conclusie was dat boeren het afgelopen jaar minimaal 2,7 miljard keer de dierenwelzijnswetten hebben overtreden. Hiervan waren 500 miljoen dieren de dupe. Er werden vervolgens minder dan 100 processen-verbaal uitgeschreven zo bleek uit het jaarverslag van de Nederlandse Voedsel – en Warenautoriteit (NVWA).
Het rapport ‘Naleving dierenwelzijnswetgeving in de vee-industrie 2014′, hierna te noemen het ‘Overtredingenrapport’, was mede onderwerp van een hoorzitting en een debat afgelopen week in de Tweede Kamer. Het Overtredingenrapport van Dier&Recht/Varkens in Nood is gebaseerd op tientallen onderzoeken van met name de Universiteit Wageningen (WUR). De belangrijkste informatie is te vinden in de ‘Ongerief”-rapporten van de WUR. ‘Ongerief’ is de wetenschappelijke term die de landbouwwereld gebruikt voor pijn of leed."