Rosemary Gladstar is the author of several books,
Rosemary Gladstar is the author of several books, including best seller Herbal Healing for Women and A Family Herbal. She has taught herbs extensively throughout the U.S. and has led travel adventures worldwide. Rosemary has founded the California School of Herbal Studies, United Plant Savers, co-founded Sage Mountain Herbs, and is a founding member of [...]
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Discount vitamins, discount minerals, discount supplements
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July 31st, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
By Kate Sheppard Members of Congress are desperate
By Kate Sheppard
Members of Congress are desperate to pass anything something on energy this week before August recess begins on Friday and they head home to face voters restive over gas prices. But Democrats and Republicans are so bitterly divided over what to do that prospects for progress look uncertain at best.
Democrats in both branches of Congress are hoping to pass bills to curb speculation in the oil-futures market and release some oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — measures that have thus far been blocked by Republicans. Over the weekend, Republicans in the Senate also blocked a measure Democrats put forward that would have provided $5.1 billion to help low-income Americans pay utility bills this year.
Republicans aren’t necessarily opposed to all of these proposals, but they’re adamant that energy legislation must open more territory to oil drilling. Senate Republicans are holding up energy bills while they push to attach provisions that would overturn bans on offshore oil drilling and oil-shale development in Western states. House Republicans have united behind a drilling-heavy bill and pledged to stay in session until they get a vote on it. (It will be interesting to see if they stick to this come Saturday.)
With the clock running out, Democrats are planning to put forward their bills again, and Republicans are likely to hold fast on their call for more drilling — but a compromise could be possible. In the Senate on Monday, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) offered Republicans the opportunity to offer four amendments to the speculation legislation, including ones on offshore drilling and oil shale. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called Reid’s move “significant,” but he has in the past pledged that his caucus won’t pass anything that doesn’t include more drilling. Even if the GOP leadership does put forward its drilling amendments and all 49 Senate Republicans back them, they would still need to pick up 11 Democrats to move them forward. Some may be willing to approve pro-drilling provisions, but most Dems are likely to vote against.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-Nev.), chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told a group of reporters over breakfast Monday that he is “not confident that anything can be passed in the Senate before the August recess.”
The “biggest opportunity” to pass energy legislation, Bingaman said, is the tax-credit extensions for renewable energy that have stalled repeatedly in the Senate, despite passing in the House on multiple occasions. GOP senators haven’t liked the Democrats’ proposals to pay for the tax credits by closing what Democrats consider to be tax loopholes for business, but moderate Democrats have insisted that so-called “pay-fors” are necessary to prevent the bill from adding to the budget deficit.
A new compromise version of the bill, proposed by Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.), would pay for the extension of tax credits by setting limits on the ability of hedge-fund managers to defer taxes on their income held offshore and by putting off until 2019 a tax credit for multinational corporations. Baucus also added a number of unrelated provisions meant to make the bill more attractive to Republicans. It’s unclear how many Republicans might be willing to back Baucus’ proposal.
Renewable-energy companies have been howling that failure to extend the tax credits is crippling them.
Said Bingaman, “I hope very much that we give priority to passing tax provisions. If we’re blocked from being able to vote on this tax package this week, it will be a loss for this country.”
And it may mean that senators and reps go home empty-handed to constituents angry over the energy situation.
By Adam Stein
From The New York Times:
Gasoline tax revenue is falling so fast that the federal government may not be able to meet its commitments to states for road projects already under way, the secretary of transportation said Monday.
The secretary, Mary E. Peters, said the short-term solution would be for the Highway Trust Fund’s highway account to borrow money from the fund’s mass transit account, a step that would balance the accounts as highway travel declines and use of mass transit increases. Both trends are being driven by the high price of gasoline and diesel fuel.
Got that? High gas prices are shifting people from cars into mass transit. The only appropriate response, clearly, is to rob the mass transit accounts to pay for highway projects.
Recall that when John McCain proposed his gas tax holiday, one of the many objections was that suspending the gas tax would divert funds from needed road and bridge repairs. Now, even without the holiday, the highway account is predicted to hit zero sometime in the next fiscal year, prompting administration officials to eye that nice, plump mass transit budget. Of course, the ostensible purpose of the gas tax holiday is to ease the economic burden on drivers, something that a gas tax holiday can’t actually accomplish, but mass transit might.
There is this hopeful bit buried at the bottom of the story:
As for a longer-term solution, Ms. Peters said that on Wednesday she would propose a new arrangement for paying for highways, based in part on private capital financing and use of tolls that vary by time of day.
Congestion pricing? But isn’t this proposal going to raise the cost of driving? I thought the ne plus ultra of energy policy was cheap gas, now and forever. Perhaps the tide really is turning …
(Via Streetsblog.)
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July 30th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
A company in Chennai has introduced the concept
A company in Chennai has introduced the concept of ‘e-smoking’ with electronic cigarettes based on the principal of ‘nicotine replacement therapy’. The
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July 29th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
Heading to the beach this weekend? You no
Heading to the beach this weekend? You no doubt made peace with the fact that you ll be adding to your carbon footprint — hey, anything for some fun in the sand and surf, right?! But you can still do something to minimize your environmental impact on the beach. And no, I m not referring to picking [...]
Christian the Lion
I saw the video corresponding to this story a couple months ago. I wanted to post it, but never got around to finding it again, until today.
Christian was a lion cub who was taken from a zoo and sold in the exotic animals section a department store in London in 1969. The two men that purchased him, John Rendall and Anthony Bourke (also sometimes credited as Ace Bourke or Ace Berg), couldn’t stand seeing the poor creature cramped up in the tiny cage. Christian became a …
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July 28th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
Guava leaf: A good anti-diarrhoea agent - New Nation
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Guava (peyara) is a very popular fruit to the people of all ages. It is often referred to as the apple of the tropics. This fruit is a native of tropical America probably from Mexico to Peru, and has long been naturalised in Bangladesh and India Go and sniff
You are probably thinking that I am still receiving treatment at the Bodytree in Kallar in South India when you look at my blog. I felt at home and comfortable in the Adivasi Ayurveda community. Before Ana and I continue our self-exploring adventures Go and sniff
July 27th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
Susun Weed, author of Healing Wise and many
Susun Weed, author of Healing Wise and many books in the Wise Woman Tradition is interviewed about herbal medicine, herbal infusions, how to learn about herbs and more. Susan Weed has a unique perspective, and this interview with Susan Weed goes into depth about how to use herbs.
Source: herbmentor.podbean.com
Private Health Services Plan - PHSP. Cost Plus Health
COST EFFICIENT BENEFIT PLAN - Private Health Services Plan - PHSP.
Source: R.webring.com
Organic Food Savings: How That Bag of Grapes Became More Expensive
It happened to me so many times, I almost thought I was losing my mind. I d see a large bag of grapes priced reasonably, and decide to buy some. But when I went through the check-out, invariably I would notice that my good deal didn t seem so good. Sometimes I d ask to verify the price [...]
Source: organicmania.com
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July 26th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
– you read it here first (or maybe
— you read it here first (or maybe second).
I don’t normally endorse individual companies. But I have long thought European allowances were the best alternative to offsets and am delighted someone has made a business out of it.
The business opportunity is clear — offsets suck. At a policy level, they can destroy the environmental value of climate legislation.
At a personal level, lots of vendors are selling very dubious offsets, including CCX. I can’t imagine why you would waste your money on the most popular offsets, trees (certainly not a Northern forest — heck, even offset seller Terrapass disses trees). And don’t get us started on the other popular offset, RECs.
But I know some of you out there really want to be carbon neutral, and while you have bought 100 percent renewable power for your superefficient home that uses a geothermal heating and cooling system to replace natural gas, and you bought a Prius for the family car and you telecommute, you just haven’t figured out how to avoid some driving and flying.
What to do? Buy real emissions credits from the European market and retire them permanently! Now that is the best idea since solar baseload.
Here is an article on Carbon Retirement, which launched on July 15. Now obviously European allowances are much more expensive than offsets — but that is the whole point. Offsets are like junk bonds or perhaps more appropriately subprime loans. European allowances are the real deal.
Yes, I know you are concerned that Phase 1 of the European emissions trading scheme didn’t go well. But in fact, it really didn’t go that badly. But in any case, Phase 1 was pre-2008 and thus was a trading scheme without a hard emissions cap, which is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the bread — a mess.
As Carbon Retirement explains:
The price of Phase 1 EUAs dropped when analysts realised in spring 2006 that European governments had allocated so many allowances that the regulated industries did not have to make reductions. This was because the allocation plans were based on estimates of emissions, rather than audited measurements.
The allocation plans behind Phase 2 are based on extensive and credible measurement of the industries’ emissions, and the industries within the scheme will have to make emission reductions. This is why the price of Phase 2 credits remained strong when the Phase 1 credits collapsed. Independent analysts have recently assessed the allocation for Phase 2 and forecast that credits will be scarce.
Actually, their entire website is incredibly informative and explains why buying and retiring European allowances is infinitely superior to wasting your money on buying offsets.
Kudos to Dan Lewer, who founded this company at the age of 25.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Source: feeds.feedburner.com
Slippery troupe
By Kate Sheppard
The McCain campaign held a press call this morning with senior policy advisers Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Nancy Pfotenhauer on the candidate’s energy plan. The subjects of yesterday’s tanker spill near New Orleans and McCain’s canceled trip to an offshore rig because of Hurricane Dolly came up during discussion of McCain’s call for more drilling.
“This [offshore drilling] is the right thing for the economy, it is the right thing for national security. And, as [McCain] is always committed to pursuing these endeavors in an environmentally friendly way, it’s the right thing for the environment in the long run as well,” said Holtz-Eakin.
“It is a reality if you talk to any kind of environmental community, everything has to be on the table. You have to have coal, you have to have natural gas, you have to have oil, you have to have nuclear power, you have to have every power source as part of the portfolio if the United States is going to achieve its environmental goals and achieve its national security goals,” Holtz-Eakin continued. “John McCain has laid out a common-sense course and allowed himself to solve the problems as opposed to being trapped by ideology.”
The idea that offshore drilling is “the right thing for the environment” will be a tough point for the McCain campaign to prove. McCain has also maintained that offshore drilling is “safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.” But according to government figures, the storms in 2005 caused 146 small spills in federal waters. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita completely destroyed 113 oil rigs and damaged 457 pipelines, and Katrina alone spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Mississippi River.
Pfotenhauer argued that yesterday’s spill wasn’t at all related to drilling — even though one would assume the 420,000 gallons of fuel oil that were dumped into the river had to come out of the ground somehow.
“I believe it was a traffic jam, or a water-traffic accident, and didn’t have anything to do with drilling. It had to do with transportation. And oil is transported on barges, and so you have the potential for those accidents regardless. No matter where it was drilled, you have the potential for those accidents in transportation,” said Pfotenhauer. “Obviously everybody takes every step they can to try to minimize those. And the record for offshore drilling has been remarkably safe over time.”
Holtz-Eakin followed by arguing that the real threat to the environment isn’t the potential for oil spills, but terrorism. “I just want to point out that, with regard to spillage and other environmental threats that come from energy sources, let’s remember that our reliance on imported oil makes the whole supply chain a target for terrorists. And in addition to that being a national security issue, it’s a big environmental threat to have terrorists looking for an opportunity to damage the supply chain for oil into the United States, and weaning ourselves of that dependence would be a great thing.
Holtz-Eakin was also asked about where the candidate stands on oil-shale development, the energy topic of the week:
The senator believes that we should take advantage of the most opportune ways to meet our oil needs in the near-term. Obviously the OCS [Outer Continental Shelf] is the most promising, readily developable oil available. Past that, he believes that the other efforts he will undertake will make it unnecessary to use large amounts of different kinds of sources. We’re not going to use them now, but if we need to use those, we’re going to use the same formula we’re going to apply to the OCS. Let’s have the local stakeholders have their say, let’s make sure we do this in an environmentally friendly way, and let’s make sure that the leases and royalties are shared in a way that’s appropriate.”
Source: feeds.feedburner.com
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July 25th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
In the ongoing food versus fuel discussion, using
In the ongoing food versus fuel discussion, using waste products from agriculture or municipal waste is often cited as being the solution as to how to produce liquid biofuels without impacting available agricultural land and increasing food prices. Producing liquid biofuels from wood waste is promising from the standpoint of availability, but is more difficult to turn into usable fuel than other products. However, a new breakthrough from China, reported on in New Scientist, offers a potential solution to this problem.
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July 24th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
RNCOS Releases a New Report- Booming Medical Tourism in India - PR.com
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Everything contained on this website are based on opinions from the Natural Life 101 team. The information is not intended to replace medical doctors, nor is it medical advise.
Welcome To Natural Life Chiropractic
Natural Life Chiropractic 131 E. Speedway Blvd. Tucson, AZ 85705-7759 Phone: (520)-740-1718 Fax (520) 740-1776
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Delhi, India, July 23, 2008 –( PR.com )– RNCOS has recently added a new Market Research Report titled, “Booming Medical Tourism in India” to its report gallery. The report provides a complete insight into the Indian medical tourism market. It
Source: www.pr.com
A tinderbox waiting to explode - Tribune
Even as an accidental explosion of an oxygen gas cylinder in a godown in Jalandhar claimed lives of four labourers yesterday, a bigger threat looms large on the residents of Mota Singh Nagar here, where nearly 100 such cylinders are lying open in two
Source: www.tribuneindia.com
July 23rd, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments
Need better sleep? Try yoga techniques - Dallas Morning News
Susun Weed, author of Healing Wise and many books in the Wise Woman Tradition is interviewed about herbal medicine, herbal infusions, how to learn about herbs and more. Susan Weed has a unique perspective, and this interview with Susan Weed goes into depth about how to use herbs.
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Yoga studio offering yoga classes and workshops in Dublin Ireland PLEASE NOTE THERE ARE NO SCHEDULED CLASSES ON BANK HOLIDAY MONDAYS. Welcome to The Yoga Room;
Source: www.yoga.ie
Yoga Health Benefits, History, Types, Statistics, Equipment, Poses and
Read about yoga types (Hatha, Ashtanga, Bikram, Kundalini, Iyengar), effects (stress management, improved flexibility), statistics, poses and postures, and history.
Source: www.medicinenet.com
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Kim Pierce is a Dallas freelance writer. It’s not clear what keeps some folks from getting a good night’s sleep, but something does. The National Sleep Foundation reported in March that nearly two-thirds of 1,000 people it polled last fall had
Source: www.dallasnews.com
July 22nd, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments