Thread: Merkel: Europe 'can no longer rely on allies' after Trump and Brexit

Originally Posted by Newmexican

What no mention of India and China - foul!

Yes, China was on the chart.

Judy wrote (excerpt):

Trump didn't cause these problems. Despite how some interpret his changes to policies and government spending, Trump and his team will probably be the ones to actually solve many of our pollution problems, including issues with the oceans and climate change.

Nobody accused Trump of causing the problem. As for the rest of your comment, you and I both know that is way off the mark because Trump has shown absolutely no interest participating in the solving of our local or global pollution problems. Actually he has went in the opposite direction. Trump, if he continues on his current path, will not go down in the history books as environmental friendly.

It seems that way to you because you've been more interested in left wing political propaganda that what Trump is actually doing. I judge that only by your information sources that you post and the comments you make in regards to them.

Just my opinion.

Originally Posted by Judy

It seems that way to you because you've been more interested in left wing political propaganda that what Trump is actually doing. I judge that only by your information sources that you post and the comments you make in regards to them.

Just my opinion.

FYI: I listen to both sides and make my own judgements. I have voted Republican my entire adult life but no political party propaganda, right or left, dictates what I think or control my thoughts. Furthermore, while immigration and border control are priority issues for me, I'm not a single issue guy. I'll be the first to admit I probably lean more left than I do right on environmental issues and that is something I won't apoligize for.

It was the Republicans who established the whole business of environmental protection. So go ahead and lean "left on environmental" which means to me in my opinion expensing innocent Americans with lost jobs, lost incomes, lost industry, higher government spending, higher taxes, more debt and higher utility costs with nothing to show for it. The "right" established the EPA, the "right" established conservation programs before that, and the "right" is now going to clean up these sites and stop more pollution where the "left" failed to do so, and do it with far less government money while securing much higher results.

Originally Posted by Judy

It was the Republicans who established the whole business of environmental protection. So go ahead and lean "left on environmental" which means to me in my opinion expensing innocent Americans with lost jobs, lost incomes, lost industry, higher government spending, higher taxes, more debt and higher utility costs with nothing to show for it. The "right" established the EPA, the "right" established conservation programs before that, and the "right" is now going to clean up these sites and stop more pollution where the "left" failed to do so, and do it with far less government money while securing much higher results.

Your argument doesn't make sense and it certainly doesn't appear as if you have a genuine concern for the current or future state of our environment. Empty platitudes aren't going to get us out of the hole we're digging.

Unregulated Capitalism Is Destroying the Planet

Monday, June 22, 2015By The Daily Take Team, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed

The Earth hasn't seen this kind of widespread extinction since the dinosaurs were wiped out by meteors more than 65 million years ago. (Photo: T-Rex Fossil via Shutterstock)

We are in the middle of the first great mass extinction since the end of the age of the dinosaurs.

That's the conclusion of a shocking new study published Friday in a journal called Science Advances.

The study, which was conducted by a group of scientists from some of the United States' leading universities, found that over the past century-plus, vertebrate species have gone extinct at a rate almost 114 times faster than average.

That's right - not one, not two, not 50, but 114 times faster than average!
The study also found that as many 477 different vertebrate species have disappeared since 1900, a mind-boggling statistic because it usually takes between 800 to 10,000 years for that many species to disappear.

In terms of the bigger picture, we really haven't seen this kind of planet-wide holocaust since an asteroid wiped out Tyrannosaurus rex and friends over 65 million years ago.
And that isn't a coincidence.

The scientists behind the vertebrate study say their data reveal an "exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity during the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way."

So that raises the question: if a sixth mass extinction is under way - what's causing it?
The answer, it turns out, is easy - arrogance, greed and the belief that we as a species can continue to exploit natural resources without any regard for the effect that such behavior has on the world around us.

One of the most important points the Pope makes in his new encyclical on the environment is that the source of our current ecological crisis is actually an ideology, the ideology of unregulated capitalism.

"The idea of infinite or unlimited growth," he writes, "which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology... is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the Earth's goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry at every limit."

As the Pope goes on to explain, we have now turned unregulated capitalism into the new God, and as result, we now see the Earth as something to dominate as opposed to something we hold in trust as part of the great chain of being.

This is really the story of Western civilization as a whole, but things have gotten a lot worse since the Reagan revolution and the "greed is good" era of the 1980s.

Before Reagan came to town, we were actually having a conversation about how to moderate our culture's tendency towards greed and exploitation.

The EPA was created, and so was Earth Day. And thanks to people like Rachel Carson, we actually took the time to think about how the hunger for profit was hurting our planet and our health.

But ever since the "Reagan Revolution," we've become addicted to the pursuit of "growth." Instead of thinking about how to become better stewards of the Earth, we now worry about how to make markets more "efficient" - the environment be damned.

Unregulated capitalism, also known as Reaganomics, is our new religion, and we're just as fundamentalist about it as the Taliban are about Islam.

And that's a really important point.

Going forward, we're going to have to make some important policy choices if we want to stop most life on Earth from vanishing forever - including, perhaps, us.

We're going to have to better manage natural resources, abandon fossil fuels and decentralize our energy system.

But we also need a revolution in terms of the way we think.

As the Pope said, "We need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that the problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals."

For too much of our history, but especially since the 1980s, we in the Western world have seen the planet as something to be exploited for profit.

We're now addicted to an extremist ideology that is literally killing us.

So if we want to save the planet, the environment and probably the human race, we're going to have to let our belief in unregulated capitalism go extinct.

This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/ite...ing-the-planet

MW wrote:

Your argument doesn't make sense and it certainly doesn't appear as if you have a genuine concern for the current or future state of our environment. Empty platitudes aren't going to get us out of the hole we're digging.

It makes perfect sense to Republicans. After all, we established the EPA, we know what it was supposed to do and not do. We're its Founders.

Originally Posted by MW

Unregulated Capitalism Is Destroying the Planet

Monday, June 22, 2015By The Daily Take Team, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed

The Earth hasn't seen this kind of widespread extinction since the dinosaurs were wiped out by meteors more than 65 million years ago. (Photo: T-Rex Fossil via Shutterstock)

We are in the middle of the first great mass extinction since the end of the age of the dinosaurs.

That's the conclusion of a shocking new study published Friday in a journal called Science Advances.

The study, which was conducted by a group of scientists from some of the United States' leading universities, found that over the past century-plus, vertebrate species have gone extinct at a rate almost 114 times faster than average.

That's right - not one, not two, not 50, but 114 times faster than average!
The study also found that as many 477 different vertebrate species have disappeared since 1900, a mind-boggling statistic because it usually takes between 800 to 10,000 years for that many species to disappear.

In terms of the bigger picture, we really haven't seen this kind of planet-wide holocaust since an asteroid wiped out Tyrannosaurus rex and friends over 65 million years ago.
And that isn't a coincidence.

The scientists behind the vertebrate study say their data reveal an "exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity during the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way."

So that raises the question: if a sixth mass extinction is under way - what's causing it?
The answer, it turns out, is easy - arrogance, greed and the belief that we as a species can continue to exploit natural resources without any regard for the effect that such behavior has on the world around us.

One of the most important points the Pope makes in his new encyclical on the environment is that the source of our current ecological crisis is actually an ideology, the ideology of unregulated capitalism.

"The idea of infinite or unlimited growth," he writes, "which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology... is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the Earth's goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry at every limit."

As the Pope goes on to explain, we have now turned unregulated capitalism into the new God, and as result, we now see the Earth as something to dominate as opposed to something we hold in trust as part of the great chain of being.

This is really the story of Western civilization as a whole, but things have gotten a lot worse since the Reagan revolution and the "greed is good" era of the 1980s.

Before Reagan came to town, we were actually having a conversation about how to moderate our culture's tendency towards greed and exploitation.

The EPA was created, and so was Earth Day. And thanks to people like Rachel Carson, we actually took the time to think about how the hunger for profit was hurting our planet and our health.

But ever since the "Reagan Revolution," we've become addicted to the pursuit of "growth." Instead of thinking about how to become better stewards of the Earth, we now worry about how to make markets more "efficient" - the environment be damned.

Unregulated capitalism, also known as Reaganomics, is our new religion, and we're just as fundamentalist about it as the Taliban are about Islam.

And that's a really important point.

Going forward, we're going to have to make some important policy choices if we want to stop most life on Earth from vanishing forever - including, perhaps, us.

We're going to have to better manage natural resources, abandon fossil fuels and decentralize our energy system.

But we also need a revolution in terms of the way we think.

As the Pope said, "We need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that the problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals."

For too much of our history, but especially since the 1980s, we in the Western world have seen the planet as something to be exploited for profit.

We're now addicted to an extremist ideology that is literally killing us.

So if we want to save the planet, the environment and probably the human race, we're going to have to let our belief in unregulated capitalism go extinct.

This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/ite...ing-the-planet

Quoting the Pope?? Now that's funny!! LOL!!

Yes, of course we're losing species, that's why since the 1960's Americans have promoted family planning to control this out of control population growth of the human species that is causing extinction in other species due to development, loss of habitat, poaching, and pollution.

Where does the Pope stand on population growth? Last I heard he's still behind the Born To Die and Forced Childbirth Programs worldwide.

Religion is for the soul. It doesn't clean up or protect the environment. It doesn't control excess population growth. It doesn't create jobs and good livings to prevent poaching, poverty or human suffering. It doesn't save our losing species. It really doesn't do anything except sooth and save the soul, beg for money and interfere in our government trying to land big grants to line their pockets for "charity".

The role of Pope religion in political and economic matters really is not a very pretty scene these days.

How to Bribe the Vatican to pitch your products:

First Solar Panels Installed on Vatican Roof

updated 9/29/2008 4:32:04 PM ET

ROME — The first of a planned 2,400 solar panels have been installed on top of the papal audience hall at Vatican City.

Workers on Monday began putting photovoltaic cells on the roof of Paul VI Hall to convert sunlight into electricity.

Pope Benedict XVI has made conserving the Earth's resources an important concern of his papacy.

Rome gets lots of sunshine, and engineers say the cells will produce enough electricity to illuminate, heat or cool the hall.

"With this plant, if it is working in about two weeks we avoid 210 tons of carbon dioxide and this is the equivalent to 70 tons of oil," said Andre Koekenhoff, from Thermovolt, the company installing the panels.

The solar panels were donated by SolarWorld, based in Bonn, Germany. The company's CEO gave the panels a Bonn-based company called SolarWorld. The company's CEO decided to give the solar project as a gift to the German-born pope.

According to Catholic New Service, the solar panels and inverters are worth nearly $1.5 million and should work without much maintenance for 25 years.

The 6,300-seat audience hall is used for the pontiff's general audiences on Wednesdays in winter and in bad weather during the rest of the year.

The auditorium had cement panels on its vast, flattened roof that needed replacement. The frames for the solar panels are the same shape and almost the same color as the cement panels they are replacing, reducing the aesthetic impact.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26946700/n.../#.WS0EPtwpDIU